Passage
by Joannawrites
Summary: As CJ, Toby, Josh, and Sam make their way down the eerie Pacific Coast Highway on a stormy night, old ghosts will haunt CJ. Post-ep, "The Women of Qumar"
1. Back to that Place I Was Before

Passage

By Joanna   
*Summary: "That's quite a lot of underwear you have there, my friend."  
  
*Disclaimers: They're not mine. Except in my head. And I think we can   
all agree that not much that is in my head counts for much. The title   
of the story and the chapters are all pieces of lyrics from "Hotel   
California" by the Eagles…and eventually the reason why will become   
apparent…maybe.   
  
*Spoilers: Anything through the end of The Women of Qumar.  
  
*Category: I think this one could stand alone…well okay, so it leans   
against The Women of Qumar and Manchester a little. CJ POV, with   
Toby, Josh, and Sam right there with her. In the same car, even.  
  
*Rating: PG-13. There's some pretty serious violence in the last chapters, although you'd never guess it from the first few. Some questionable language here and there too perhaps.   
  
*Special thanks always to Lisa R—this time particularly for helping   
me keep the stabbings to a minimum. And to Liz, who it turns out,   
*is* a beta reading goddess after all and for Sam's gambling habits.   
  
*Author's note: This one started out to be a light-hearted story, but the angst seemed to return of its own accord. In a major way. Some Graphic Violence. Beware.

Chapter One: Back To That Place I Was Before  
  
"He's sick."  
  
"What do you mean, `he's sick?'"  
  
"That," Toby mutters darkly as he stops in my doorway and watches me   
carefully roll my clothes and place them just so in my suitcase. He's   
been packed for three hours, as far as I know, but also, as far as I   
know everything in his suitcase has been wadded into a ball. I have   
something against ironing. I suck at it, first and foremost.   
Therefore, I'm a careful packer. He can live with it. Or not.   
  
Strange thing about Toby. The man, physically speaking, isn't a   
threatening figure. Or rather, he shouldn't be. But there's some sort   
of a shadow all around him. Now, for instance, he seems to completely   
fill…and well, *darken* my doorway, though there's a good two feet of   
light from the hall shining in over his bald head. He's swelling with   
irritation now, so that that space seems to close.  
  
"CJ…you've had forty-five minutes to pack. I don't understand…this…"   
he breaks off, searching for words to describe the remaining half of   
my clothes still lying neatly on their hangers across my also-neatly   
made-up hotel room bedspread, grouped in outfits for the remaining   
days of our four day run on the Pacific Coast. When words for my   
insanity fail him, he settles for waving his hands around. "It's   
packing, it's a suitcase. The clothes go in. You zip it up. We leave   
here on *time*."  
  
"Well, that's just crazy talk, Tobus. And the sooner you learn that   
I'm worth waiting for, the better your life will be." I try to say   
the words brightly, but the sound just comes out flat.   
  
Like I'm pissed. Which I suppose I am. Still.  
  
He tilts his head to the side for a moment, and looks relieved when   
Josh's voice drifts in from down the hall. His face soon follows,   
appearing over Toby's shoulder. "I got us a 5:30 p.m. flight to   
foggy San Francisco. Home of the Golden Gate Bridge and The Giants.   
Also Rice-a-Roni."  
  
"What do you mean you got us a flight? I was under the impression we   
didn't have to go through a travel agent to book our seats on Air   
Force One." My tone is noticeably lighter with Joshua. I say   
noticeably because I feel Toby's gaze on me and know he noticed it.  
  
"That's funny, CJ. No really. You're clever. Clever girl. That's   
quite a lot of underwear you have there, my friend."  
  
I look down to the pile of panties and bras (also neatly rolled—it   
saves space, I swear it), and am mildly surprised to discover I'm not   
really embarrassed in the least to have Toby and Josh standing there   
staring at them. I spend way too much time with these guys, I decide   
then and there.  
  
"How many days are we gonna be away, Toby?" Josh asks, wandering   
closer to the bed to get a better look. He reaches a hand down as if   
to touch one of the silkier looking garments, catches my eye, and   
rightfully fearful of losing a hand, steps back.  
  
A sigh of the long-suffering. Then Toby says, "four."  
  
"And how many pair of panties do you suppose is right there?"  
  
"I don't--I'd really rather not know," Toby says, impatience   
lingering in every word. He clearly isn't in the mood.  
  
Undaunted, Josh continues to watch the small heap of lingerie with   
fascination. "I'm no mathematician, but I'm gonna guess at least   
fifteen full sets. Can you please explain to me why a four day trip   
requires fifteen pairs of underwear? I have trouble understanding why   
a four day trip requires four pairs."  
  
I feel it then. The blood creeping up my neck and into two bright   
spots on each cheek. The heat seems to pulse off of me, crawling   
straight to the roots of my hair. So, I have a fear of running out of   
underwear. Perfectly normal. I don't care what they will say. Plenty,   
I imagine.  
  
"I don't believe it. You're blushing." Josh says with a smirk that   
makes me want to roll *him* up and stuff him into a suitcase. Or body   
bag. I'm not picky, you understand.  
  
"I'm not blushing," I rather obviously lie. "And would you please   
explain to me what's going on? The President is sick? We've booked a   
flight on Air Force One? What?"  
  
"Not Air Force One. Delta. The President isn't going tonight. We'll   
fly on ahead and get things set up for the fund raiser," Josh   
supplies, and I'm a little surprised at how easily he's sidetracked.   
I make a mental note. *Ask Josh a question that makes him feel like   
he knows more than you and he's yours for the steering*…oh wait, I've   
known that for years.   
  
"The President is sick? Is it the…" I break off, because I see Toby   
and Josh's eyes widen, and my own heart beats a little faster too,   
like I came very close to saying something I shouldn't. The MS is   
quite in the open, but for some reason, we all still feel it's taboo,   
a secret. The secret that could still bring us down, and the world   
knows why.   
  
"It's an inner ear thing. He can't fly with it." Toby supplies   
quickly.  
  
"Are we sure that's what it is?" I ask with just a bit of cynicism.   
I was okay lying about the President's health before I realized I was   
part of a conspiracy. Before I needed a lawyer. Before I knew that I   
was being lied to. I'm still hurting from it. Maybe reeling too. It   
doesn't come so easily to lie about anything now.  
  
"CJ, don't." Toby's voice carries a note of warning.  
  
"I'm just…" I pause when the timber of his words echoes in my head   
and glare at him and then snap, "Toby--what the hell is your problem   
exactly?"   
  
"Yes, thank you for your concern, he'll be fine. They don't expect   
any complications."  
  
I refuse to be abashed by this. Word of Toby's initial reaction to   
finding out about the President's condition has gotten around by now.   
His primary concern wasn't how Jed Bartlet was feeling either. We   
glower for a moment. Sometimes I come close to hating him when he   
looks down…or up, I amend with sort of vicious satisfaction…his nose   
at me with those eyes.   
  
"The press is going to ask questions."  
  
"He had a meeting tonight and decided to wait until tomorrow to fly.   
Happy?"  
  
"Yes. Because lying to the press about his health hasn't ever gotten   
us into trouble in the past."  
  
"CJ," the warning tone is identical to the one I just advised him not   
to take.   
  
"Never mind, Toby," I say and turn away from him altogether.  
  
"Can we just clarify once and for all, that *I* didn't sell the god   
damned guns to Qumar?"   
  
He points this out to my shoulder blades, which I instantly draw up   
into a defensive line. Beside me, Josh stiffens and looks back toward   
the doorway in surprise. Toby doesn't even raise his voice but he   
knows how to use words so that the statement has the exact effect he   
knew it would. My throat gets too tight for more words and sudden   
tears…tears of fury, mind you, nothing more…threaten my eyes. He's   
going for the low blow here.  
  
And he wins because I don't trust myself to say anything further to   
him right now. Not with Josh in the room. Not with these ridiculous   
tears in my eyes. It's too sore a place right now, I tell myself.   
Soon, though, there will be a reckoning. I will kick his ass.  
  
Josh looks from one of us to the other, and back to the bed. Finally,   
his curiosity gets the better of him, and while he thinks I'm   
distracted by my stand off with Toby, he reaches down to pick up one   
of my sexiest, if I do say so myself, pairs of royal blue bikini-cut   
panties.  
  
"My, my, Claudia Jean. Lace?" he murmurs with a smile in the corner   
of his mouth, seconds before I slap his hand, rather hard because I'm   
furious with Toby, and he yelps and drops them. I pick them up and   
begin the process of rolling them again.  
  
Josh is still fascinated. "Seriously, fifteen pair?"  
  
Toby sighs heavily. It's his martyr sigh, and I know it. He ignores   
Josh, and now his words are what he imagines as conciliatory. Which   
to me, in my present mood, translates right into condescending. "The   
President is on antibiotics for the ear thing. We're hoping tomorrow   
morning he'll be okay to fly. We'll go on in tonight and start   
getting things ready for him. Plan B is that he'll come tomorrow   
afternoon and arrive in time for the fundraiser. Worst case scenario,   
he gets worse and misses the fundraiser. By the way, we have   
scheduled a meeting for him tonight, so you aren't lying. If the   
press asks directly about his health, you'll tell them."  
  
"If he can't come tomorrow, there won't be any need to tell the press   
anything. They'll run all over it."  
  
Toby's lips press tightly against whatever he was going to say.   
Instead he mutters, "then hope he can come tomorrow."  
  
"And I don't need to stay with the press?" I ask. Not that I want to   
stay with the press by any means, but because I'm afraid one of them   
will suggest it before I do and then I'll feel resentful and hurt   
about being left out.  
  
And I'm not unjustified here. They've shut me out before. Recently.   
After I screwed up Haiti in a moment when I couldn't afford to be   
anything less than completely cautious. Things have been a bit shaky   
for as long as I can remember, but more so after that day. They ran   
from me like the wildfire of destruction I was to the administration   
in that moment. I'm still a little pissed about that too.  
  
Admittedly we feel better after the President's apology in   
Manchester, but things for us are different now. And not one of us   
knows how to go back to the way it was. We tried it for awhile. With   
some success. And then Toby had me announce that we were selling guns   
to Qumar. And later called Nancy in to try to smooth my feathers…at   
least that was the phrase I heard Josh use for it later, when I   
wasn't supposed to be walking by the bullpen at the moment he was   
telling Sam about it.   
  
Smoothing my feathers? I still can hear still the words and they   
still sound like shattering glass to me. Because I can also still   
remember that when I saw Nancy standing in my office, I thought I was   
being benched again. Just like Haiti. Which put me instantly on the   
defensive.   
  
And when Nancy tried to explain to me why selling guns to these…I   
won't call them men because I can't…these *things* who violate the   
simplest human rights of their women, of their mothers and wives and   
sisters…was necessary, well I may have stepped over any number of   
lines. But pardon me for thinking it was a little more serious a   
matter than my feathers being ruffled.  
  
But I went into the press room and I bit my tongue and I did my job,   
because I was afraid, with good reason, that I wouldn't have it any   
longer if I did say what was on my mind.  
  
At the very least, I knew I'd be benched again. And if that happened,   
my credibility, would come down around me all over again. Funny thing   
about losing your credibility. It isn't something that comes down   
hard or fast. Rather it just slips off and falls gently away, like a   
silk wrapper pushed from your shoulders. I'd felt it happen before,   
any number of times. But never so much as in the silence that had   
been so deafening moments after Nancy stood up at my podium to take   
questions about Haiti.   
  
My cheeks are growing warmer from the remembered embarrassment.  
  
So I'd done Qumar. And I'd taken a pass. Toby had come to that   
briefing. He'd stood at the back of the room and looked as close to   
frightened as Toby Ziegler ever had looked, I supposed. And I'd   
choked on my nonchalance over the announcement, and Toby had placed   
his hands over his heart and given me a gentle look, and I think he   
maybe knew what it had cost me just then, but I still couldn't fully   
forgive him. Or our administration. Mostly, I couldn't forgive   
myself. I was just taking it out on everyone, including myself, but   
mostly Toby.   
  
Before, we were changing the world. Now it feels like we're just   
another thing that is wrong with it.   
  
"We need you there," Josh says almost gently, and I'm pretty sure he   
knows where my mind has gone. "Somebody else will brief the press   
tomorrow morning, and you'll take it back when they get to San   
Francisco. You're more valuable to us tonight."   
  
Exactly what I needed right then. A little more patronization. "Yeah,   
okay," I say and turn back to my suitcase.  
  
"You put together a hell of a press event, CJ. We need you with us,"   
Toby says to my turned back and I choose to take it for the rare   
accolade and apology I think he means it to be.  
  
"Let me just finish packing."  
  
Toby huffs. Josh grins. And things feel a little better.   
  
"Hey, ready?" Sam calls from the other side of the hallway as he   
emerges from his room, his garment bag slung over his shoulder. "We   
need to be at the airport at least two hours before the flight, you   
know. I called, and they said it should take us about twenty minutes   
to get there from here. We'll have cabs downstairs in five minutes.   
The airline was a little worried about a storm off the coast that   
looks like it's turning for land."  
  
"It's really amazing you didn't get beat up more in school." Josh   
shakes his head and murmurs after we stand in bewildered silence for   
a minute, watching Sam. "Or now."   
  
Sam looks worried. "CJ, you aren't packed yet?"  
  
"I don't recall asking any of you here," I say fixing a witchy look   
on Sam, who grins past my shoulder to where Josh is standing behind   
me, holding up my underwear again and saying, "you've got to come see   
this. It's a freakish travel underwear collection."  
  
"Travel underwear? You mean like tiny-sized underwear? Because I can   
get behind that!" Thus invited, Sam steps further into the room and   
stops on my other side. He and Josh continue to admire my collection   
while I work on rolling and laying the rest of my suits side by side   
across the suitcase, over the layer of jeans and sweaters that go on   
the bottom.  
  
"I'm very much into the red ones," Sam confesses to Josh, as if I'm   
not there at all. Since I'm basically ignoring them, I suppose it's   
just as well.  
  
"Too flashy. Black for me any day," Josh responds and points, but is   
careful not to touch, the pair of his choosing. My fingerprints,   
which would have been better placed across Toby's face, still redden   
the back of the hand he is gesturing with.  
  
"Toby, what's your pick?"  
  
"None at all," Toby says with a quiver of laughter, and I look at   
him, surprised. The man has the strangest ability to catch me off   
guard. His lips are closed against a wicked grin as he looks back at   
me, dark eyes unfathomable except for a spark of mischief.  
  
"Excellent choice!" Sam agrees and Josh nods.  
  
"Are the marvelous three coming tonight?" I ask Toby over my   
shoulder, because it's clear Sam and Josh aren't interested in   
talking shop. They are crowding me a little now as I try to go back   
to rolling and placing clothes in an orderly fashion.  
  
He winces at my choice of words but doesn't comment. "Bruno's staying   
here. Doug and Connie aren't. We're meeting them at the airport."  
  
"Goodie." I say. With a sizable measure of sarcasm, and I'm showing   
restraint. When I turn back around, Josh is holding one of my bras to   
his chest. "Oh my God! You win!" I explode and then snatch the bra   
from him and stuff it in the suitcase, along with the rest of my   
belongings. It causes me pain to do this. It's complete chaos. Friday   
and Sunday's outfits right next to each other, and Saturday's a   
little too close to my casual clothes layer for comfort. "Okay?   
You're ironing my clothes. Josh. Sam."  
  
"So there's a possibility that we're going to leave Portland after   
all?" Toby says, finally straightening from his slump against the   
door frame, an expression of hope lighting up his scowl.  
  
"I'm ready, damn it. Let's go. We need to be there two hours ahead of   
time and there's apparently a storm blowing off the coast that   
Delta's worried about. Which means our flight is going to be   
cancelled anyway, but God knows I'd rather sit at the airport than   
right here in a comfortable suite with a bed and bathroom that the   
scourge of the earth hasn't used."  
  
"You're a little bit of a snob, CJ," Sam observes after they watch me   
wrestle my suitcase closed and drag it off the bed. It hits the floor   
with what sounds like the intention to fall the twelve floors to the   
lobby below.  
  
They stand and watch me. Looking amused. And smug.  
  
"No, really, no, I've got it," I say and pulling out the handle to   
roll the suitcase with, I sweep out of my door in a grand fashion,   
and just manage not to fall on my face when the wheels catch the   
threshold.  
*  
  
So, admittedly, I'm a little bit of a snob. After riding in Air   
Force One, after going when the President says go, after no trains,   
no baggage claim, no gate agents, and no gates for that matter, the   
Portland airport is just a little bit of a trial for me. And even   
before my first ride on Air Force One, I'd long since developed a   
deep rooted mistrust of the airlines' ability to get my bag within   
three state lines of the one I was supposed to end up in. After   
several experiences with delays and bad weather, I'm not even fully   
confident of ending up in the same state I'm supposed to be   
travelling to.   
  
It isn't an unfounded fear. Honest to God, my clothes once went to   
Paris while I went to West Virginia. Talk about the raw end of that   
deal.  
  
I've been called a "clothes horse" by my reporters before. I reacted   
strongly. But the truth is, I do love good clothes. That's the only   
kind I own. And the $500 they offer you if they lose your suitcase,   
well, that isn't going to cover it.  
  
So this is why, when I haul my bag onto the little platform beside   
the ticket agent (without the help of any of my three male   
companions, the pansies. What do I expect? Josh wouldn't even be   
carrying his own bag if Donna were here) my hand stays closed tight   
around the strap, even as the cheerful girl slaps the stickers on it   
and tries to pull it onto the conveyer that will take it…possibly   
forever…out of my sight.  
  
"CJ, it's time to let go," Sam says soothingly and pries my fingers   
from my suitcase. I stand sort of forlornly and watch it disappear   
through the gray flaps that lead into whatever mysterious place it is   
that my luggage will probably go to die.  
  
"Get help," Toby mutters at me as he tosses his own small bag up. If   
I could cast a curse on baggage (which apparently I can, but I'm   
speaking of other people's bags now) I would see to it that he got   
his back full of pineapples and coconut shell bras. I heard of   
someone that happened to once. Or maybe it was a nightmare. I don't   
really remember.  
  
When we're all checked in, and Josh has given the ticket agent a   
small dose of hell over the permissible size of carry-on bags (he   
abides the regulations faithfully, but why the hell aren't the people   
who don't not dealt with to the fullest extent of the law?) and has   
promised to call the FAA on the matter, we take our regulation carry   
on bags (although admittedly, mine could be on the outside of   
regulation) and start through the airport.  
  
I'm surprised by the little thrill that runs through me as I walk   
shoulder to shoulder with Sam Seaborn, following close behind the   
purposeful footsteps of Toby Ziegler and Josh Lyman. People turn to   
look at us. In some cases they are trying to recall where they've   
seen us before, thrown off by our casual attire. Others know who we   
are and excitedly turn to their companions, or complete strangers,   
and start whispering. I feel a little bit like a celebrity.   
  
I'm proud for a moment. It's something I haven't felt for a long   
time, but at first, during the campaign and during our first years,   
I'd feel it all the time. A privileged sort of elation to belong in   
this boy's club. To be accepted here. To be appreciated by these fine…  
finest… minds for my contributions.  
  
I'm a full-grown, extremely confident, extremely intelligent woman.   
But the part of me that lived long ago in a too-tall, too-skinny   
frame with braces and glasses and never turned any boy's head unless   
it was to invite painful teasing, feels this is still some sort of   
apology from above. I am walking and laughing with Sam Seaborn, with   
his complete attention focused on me, which most women and quite a   
few men understandably resent me for.   
  
And it isn't just the fact that they are all such extraordinary men.   
It's that they are extraordinary and that they think I am   
extraordinary too. I've lost sight of that feeling because I've been   
wallowing in my own bitter, self-mocking agony over Haiti for too   
long. Maybe I'm finally going to be able to shake it. I just need a   
few good days, I plead silently, to get my game back.   
  
I feel it now as Josh grins over his shoulder as we pass Starbucks,   
knowing that I'll be giving it a longing stare, which I am, but Sam's   
on a schedule and coffee isn't on the itinerary.   
  
I feel it as Sam puts his hand on the small of my back to let me onto   
the escalator first, then steps close behind me, his arms braced on   
either side of me.   
  
I feel it as Toby drops back to ask me what I think of having the   
President enter through the crowd tomorrow evening instead of at   
stage left, and agrees with my point that we don't want to offend   
anyone that President doesn't stop and talk to.  
  
But then, we arrive at our gate, and Doug and Connie are already   
there, lounging across three chairs each with notes spread in every   
direction, and the bottom drops out of my new found sense of worth.   
These are the people Leo brought in to do the job he didn't have   
faith in our ability to do.  
  
I notice it in Sam and Josh and Toby too. The deflation. We hate   
these people. We cannot work with them because we don't want to. We   
resent them down to the last drop of blood in our veins. They are   
ruining everything. They are ruining us.  
  
There is instantly space between us all that wasn't there before. The   
space is exactly equal to that of two people we are afraid can do our   
jobs better than we can.  
  
To say it's awkward as we take places in the row facing Doug and   
Connie and start to pull out our own notes, looking like the kids who   
are always late for class and thus always annoying the good students,   
is like saying a root canal tickles a little. There is silence, even   
as people move all around us. Going places, going home, oblivious to   
the war being waged across the plastic seat backs of gate B-6.  
  
We are all studiously watching the pages we hold in our hands, which   
might as well be blank, because we aren't reading. Not any of us. Not   
Doug and Connie. It's too tense for concentration. Toby looks up from   
the speech and watches CNN on the television suspended from the   
ceiling, but his heart isn't in it. I see his eyes roam around,   
looking for a clock. Seeing that we have nearly an hour before   
boarding, his eyes instead shift to the large window where our plane   
is sitting patiently. I imagine that if he had it, and if the   
security guards wouldn't arrest him immediately, he'd be bouncing his   
little pink ball off the glass by now with more zeal than usual.  
  
"This was the earliest flight we could get on?" Toby finally growls,   
looking to Doug as if it's his fault.  
  
Doug stares back for a moment, and I can honestly understand the   
man's thinning patience. Mind you, I don't care, but I do understand   
it. Toby is riding him hard. Maybe it's a stretch to blame flight   
scheduling on him.  
  
Doug's been pushed past a line. "Did I hear that correctly? Did Toby   
Ziegler, master of grammar and all that is holy, just end a sentence   
with a preposition?"  
  
Josh, Sam, and Connie's heads snap back to watch the exchange with a   
mixture of awe for what Doug has just said and trepidation for what   
Toby might say next. When Toby chuckles, a sound that is completely,   
and I mean completely, devoid of humor, my stomach turns over   
unexpectedly. I meet Sam's knowing gaze. We've both been on the   
receiving end of that particular sound before.  
  
Toby doesn't notice any of this though. He just watches Doug, his   
cheek dipping in and out as he grinds his teeth together. Finally, he   
smiles, again, without any hint of friendliness moving into his eyes.   
And he tries again.  
  
"This was the earliest flight we could get on, asshole?'"  
  
"As a matter of fact, yes," Doug smiles pleasantly, "But seeing as   
you could barely get here in time for this one, that's probably just   
as well."   
  
And now I want to hurl myself across the carpet between us and wrap   
my fingers around Doug's throat, and squeeze until he can't breathe   
any more. Sam, either knowing the look of death from me well, or   
feeling much the same thing, touches my shoulder with the arm he's   
rested across my seat back. Down girl. I can hear him thinking it.   
Too many witnesses.  
  
I catch Connie's eye and see her annoyance and imagine she feels the   
same way about Toby. Again, the caring by me, not so much.  
  
"Oh, thank God," Sam says on a release of air when Josh's phone   
rings.   
  
"Josh Lyman," he begins and then adds, "Hey Leo," with a poignant   
look divided between Toby and Doug that suggests that he doesn't want   
to have to explain to Leo why there's the sound of fists on flesh in   
the background. With another look at them both, in which there is an   
absolute lack of confidence, Josh gets up and walks away from us all.  
  
And we revert back to silence strained through our tightly closed   
teeth and throw our gazes back to the papers clutched in white-  
knuckled grasps.  
  
Josh returns, looking around himself carefully, as if he expects he's   
being followed by the mob. He sits down at the edge of his seat and   
leans forward, whispering to us. "I have some inside information."  
  
We all look at him expectantly. He savors the moment, the moment   
where he knows more than we do.   
  
"Josh—" Toby's ability to make the sound of each of our names into an   
explicit threat is really a gift, I think. I have a mental picture of   
him standing in front of a mirror and practicing it for hours on end.  
  
Josh takes a deep breath and looks defiant, then catches Toby's   
expression and says in a rush, "In fifteen minutes, the FAA will   
announce that it is grounding all flights on the North Pacific Coast.   
Our flight is cancelled. The storm is already creating trouble South   
of here."  
  
"I told you so," I say petulantly. I think, honest to God, my lower   
lip pokes out a bit. "Now, we're going to be stuck here for the rest   
of our lives."  
  
"We can go back to the hotel, can't we?" Connie suggests.  
  
"Yes, we can," Josh smiles, or smirks, and I'm instantly on guard.   
Josh is smirking like he knows something we don't know still. And I   
think about asking him to confess, but his gaze slides into mine and   
there's a barely perceptible wink and I bite my lip and stand up.  
  
"Well, this has been fun," Sam says by way of parting when Toby, Josh   
and I start to wordlessly walk away from Doug and Connie.  
  
Doug and Connie ignore him, and for a minute, I think that we are all   
five-year-olds. Oh wait, it might have sounded as if I cared there.   
Fighting a last minute urge to turn around and stick my tongue out at   
them both, I catch up to Josh and fall in, nearly getting myself run   
over by one of those little airport vehicles shuttling old people to   
their gates. I give myself a moment to ponder the thought of me in   
one of those around the West Wing, flattening reporters. And   
staffers. I smile and laugh to myself. Josh looks at me worriedly.  
  
"All right, skippy. Spill it." I say.  
  
"Leo wants us back at the hotel," Josh says as Toby and Sam appear at   
our elbows. "That's why he gave us the heads up before the FAA   
announced. Wanted to be sure we could get a cab out of here."  
  
"This is hardly cloak and dagger, Joshua," I say and Toby cringes,   
because Toby is a hater of all things cliché. Which is why I'm not,   
basically.  
  
"Well, I'm thinking that we have time to get down to the car rental   
places. Why couldn't we drive to San Francisco?"  
  
"You mean why not, in addition to the fairly perilous wind and ice   
storm bearing down on us?" Sam wonders.  
  
"Yeah, in addition to that." Josh says, clapping his hands, urging us   
to focus. I'm urged right into annoyance.  
  
"Well, there's the fact that our luggage won't be unloaded for hours.   
And you're going to have to drag me kicking and screaming without my   
suitcase, I'll tell you right now."  
  
"CJ, seriously. A twelve-step," Josh suggests, and plunges   
forward. "We'll claim the bags tomorrow by phone or something. Look,   
it's a couple of hours of driving. We'll take turns. If it gets too   
rough, we'll find somewhere to stop, but we'll be that much closer   
tomorrow."  
  
"It's an eight hour drive," Sam corrects then ponders for a   
moment. "Probably more like ten."  
  
Toby adds, "and the President is still going to beat us there. If we   
have to stop, Doug and Connie will too."  
  
"No they won't! This storm will blow over in a couple of hours. The   
airports could be screwed up for days. They'll have to wait on the   
President. And we'll get down there ahead of Doug and Connie and   
we'll have time to do it our way. I've got a feeling. We'll be there   
by the morning. This storm isn't as bad as they're saying."  
  
"Thank you Flip Spiceland," Sam murmurs, sees our confused looks and   
then explains, "he's a weatherman from Atlanta." We continue to   
stare. "I really don't know why I know that." He falls quiet again,   
and I imagine he's trying to recall exactly why he does know the name   
of a weatherman in Atlanta.  
  
Josh's point about beating Doug and Connie appeals to us all, even   
though his plan is about two steps inferior to anything Wyle E.   
Coyote ever concocted. We're going to race Doug and Connie to San   
Francisco. This can only end badly, I know. We'll never catch the   
roadrunner. And because our motives are so impure, we're absolutely   
destined to fall off a cliff.  
  
"I need to call Leo. So, are you guys…and girl," Josh adds sweetly   
because he's sucking up, "game?"  
  
Toby is tired enough of waiting around that he nods, and so does Sam.   
Josh looks to me.  
  
"Meep-meep." I say, and they look at me in such similar fashions that   
I can only smile in response and know that it will never, ever work.

*******


	2. Pretty, Pretty Boys She Calls Friends

Chapter 2: Pretty, Pretty Boys She Calls Friends  
  
They are all standing at the rental car counter, and though I'm a   
good distance away (all the better to look like I'm not with them) I   
can hear Josh's voice climbing. He wants a full-sized or a mini-van.   
They only have compacts. They're lying. He knows that's a lie   
because he's seen an expose. The rental car companies are involved   
in a conspiracy.   
  
With the people with oversized carry on bags, apparently. Because   
why would the rental car company rent us one of the minivans they   
have hoarded--a vehicle that would cost more initially and more by   
the mile--when they could get less money by renting us a compact and   
thereby annoy Josh Lyman. It really isn't such a bad business   
strategy, I muse.  
  
Clearly, Josh isn't well.  
  
I am watching the line of cancellations roll down the screens with   
the flight numbers. Listening to groans of dismay all around.   
Cursing. Pacifying airline worker voices. CXL. CXL. CXL. I knew that   
already. I have a cool job.  
  
Except that I don't, really. Because I'm about to spend the next   
twelve (I know Sam said ten at worst, but Sam's a damned optimist   
and I have zero confidence in these three people's ability to get   
from the bull pen to the oval office without some catastrophe, so   
excuse my pragmatism) hours packed into a compact car with these   
guys. Then I'm going to get out of the car, with no change of   
clothes, and go to work setting up a press event.   
  
By the time of the fundraiser, I'll have been up approximately 38   
hours. And then there will be the usual cocktails and schmoozing and-  
-I think that the word schmoozing just actually ran through my head   
which disturbs me--then it'll be onto Air Force One for a night   
flight to Los Angeles, where we're going to need to prep the   
President for a town-hall meeting of sorts at UCLA, and then back up   
to Seattle to finish out our run at a benefit for the   
environment.   
  
I sigh, shrug, and say aloud, "I've pulled all-nighters with these   
guys before." Then I notice a security guard is watching me   
suspiciously, and with a defiant look at him, I edge closer to the   
rental car counter and Josh.  
  
So Leo wasn't too enthusiastic about our plan to head down to San   
Francisco, but he had to give over to Josh's logic (an oxymoron if I   
ever heard it) that the President has been prepped and needs his   
rest and that there is really absolutely nothing left for us in   
Portland. (Except a bed, I pointed out during this part of Josh's   
relay of his conversation with the Chief-of-Staff). It makes sense   
to try to get as far as we can to San Francisco, because even if the   
airports are reopened in the morning, it will be chaos. And if the   
President isn't well enough to fly first thing, and we've waited,   
then we will have absolutely no time to prepare beforehand.  
  
  
Leo likes preparation. Therefore, we're going to California. 

Maybe.   


If Josh stops arguing about the cost of a car he doesn't even want.   
There's a line forming behind us. People are looking. And while it   
would give me a perverse sort of satisfaction to read a piece in the   
Portland paper about what an asshole Deputy Chief of Staff Josh   
Lyman is, it's not something I really want to deal with in the press   
room any time soon.   
  
I just don't think I can spin it.  
  
"Oh my God," I interrupt Josh suddenly and reach across the   
counter. "Give me the pen. We'll take what you have."  
  
Josh's jaw goes slack as I sign my name on the form and hand the pen   
back the grateful looking man behind the counter. In moments, I have   
the keys and instructions on where to find our car.   
  
Josh's mouth is still open and as I turn and lead the way toward the   
automatic sliding glass doors, he finally is able to sputter…he   
really does sputter. "CJ, I was *haggling* there. I was getting us a   
deal! You can't just give into those people, you can't just…"  
  
"San Francisco, Josh. Tomorrow," I remind him.   
  
"You're telling me to pick my battles."  
  
"I'm telling you that you're unbalanced, but you know, you say   
potato…"  
  
"Sure hope Carol can find your bag," Josh says in an offhand way,   
and I falter in mid-step and victory is his.   
  
"Be a shame to lose all that underwear," Sam adds, and sounds like   
he means it.   
  
*  
"No way. This thing has a GPS!" Josh half shouts as soon as we are   
in the car. I wince. Josh doesn't really have an indoor voice. Even   
less so an enclosed-vehicle voice.  
  
"A what?" I wonder.  
  
"A GPS. Global Positioning Satellite." Josh screeches, and starts   
pressing buttons. "I've heard about these! You see what I did back   
there? I intimidated them and they gave me GPS."  
  
"And GPS is good because?" I wonder.  
  
"It's not." Sam mutters.  
  
"Are you kidding me?" Josh asks. "Are you kidding me? This is   
awesome."  
  
Me again. Louder. "What does it do?"  
  
"Well, it tells you where you are and where you're going. Or   
something, you know." Josh shrugs. Josh is very technical.  
  
Feeling slightly encouraged by this piece of news, I sit up   
straighter. "You mean it's going to get us to San Francisco instead   
of you guys?" My voice is a glitter with hope.  
  
"It's crap," Sam growls.  
  
I ignore Sam per my usual policy. "How does it work?"  
  
Sam turns around and looks at me. "Well, it works on the theory of   
trilateration, you see. Which means that it locates three points and   
calculates your distance from each of them in order to place you. In   
the case of GPS, the three points are satellites. There are twenty-  
four of them, and at least four on the horizon at any given time.   
Now, since we know where the satellites are positioned, and we know   
how fast the radio waves from the GPS signals travel…186,000 miles   
per second, which is also, you might be interested to know, the speed of light, 

then the unknown factor of where the signals are coming from becomes a simple

equation."  
  
Sam stops talking when he realizes we are all staring at him.   
  
"Seriously," Josh says, "you should leave your house more often."   
  
Josh figures out how to turn on the GPS finally, and then enters   
some stuff. We have yet to leave the parking garage at the airport.   
  
And suddenly, the weirdest thing happens. The little black box   
mounted on the dashboard starts talking to us. Telling us to back   
out of the space and to bear to the right, right out of the parking   
garage. When we don't respond fast enough, it repeats itself.   
Sounding a little annoyed.  
  
I'm duly impressed. Josh nearly backs into someone in his eagerness   
to obey the little radio voice that's ordering us around. Toby   
doesn't seem to have heard anything that was said. He's just sitting   
behind the driver's seat, staring.   
  
Sam is sulking.  
  
Focusing on him, I wonder, "What do you have against GPS?"  
  
"It's the lazy man's way out. It's a cop out. There's something to   
be said for real maps and road signs and, and…" he gropes for words.  
  
"Celestial navigation?" Toby supplies and Sam snaps his fingers.   
  
"Exactly. Humans were meant to be explorers. This is what we do. Why   
would you trust this tiny little computer without a heart and a soul   
and a natural spirit of exploration?"  
  
Toby answers what was likely meant to be a rhetorical question on   
Sam's part. "Because each satellite costs $12 billion to build and   
launch and because you don't know the difference between the North   
Star and the dark side of my ass."  
  
Sam shuts up.  
  
I ignore the fact that my legs are folded about four times behind   
Sam's seat (he called shotgun first, although I don't believe we   
were in sight of the car and I put up a hearty protest), and press   
my nose to the very cold window. GPS is happy because we've followed   
instructions and have no more turns for several hundred miles. Josh   
has pretty decent taste in music, actually, and I am softly humming   
harmony to Tom Petty's "You Don't Know How it Feels."   
  
Portland is a beautiful city. Although I would never admit it to   
any of my comrades, I am honestly enjoying the drive out of town.   
There's sort of a shimmering view of snow-capped Mt. Hood caught up   
in the pinkish rays of the lowering sun, which is starting to slip   
below a very threatening looking line of clouds. Further away still,   
so that it looks like a mirage, Mt. Rainier wavers on the horizon.  
  
The speech for tomorrow is locked, there's nothing I can really do   
until I see the forum, there's no press to brief, no wires to read.  
  
It feels like vacation. Maybe this wasn't the worst idea Josh ever   
had. Not that I'm going to say so, mind you.   
  
"Let's roll another joint!" Josh and Sam sing—I use the term loosely—  
with *feeling*, and I'm rethinking.   
  
Toby, in the back seat with me, seems to be looking for a way out of   
the car.  
  
*  
  
I must have fallen asleep not long after we left the city limits. I   
don't remember closing my eyes, but I'd been gazing out the window,   
listening to the familiar rise and fall of their voices and NPR's   
monotonous drone underneath it. NPR always reminds me of my father.   
Whenever our family took vacations, I can remember laying in the   
back of the family station wagon, listening to my mother and father   
talking, my brothers' snoring, and NPR. I always loved to come   
awake slowly to those sounds again, and then sit up to discover   
where we were, how much closer to our destination we'd moved while I   
lay dreaming.   
  
Not so much this time. No gentle fluttering of eyelids. No slow   
bleeding of dreams into wakefulness.   
  
"A Waffle House!" Josh shouts and the car dives to the right, "You   
gotta be kidding me!"  
  
I jerk upright, and nearly install a sunroof. I make a few confused   
sounds and then realize Josh, and, by association we, are swerving   
across three lanes of traffic in order to make for an exit. It's   
nearly dark outside, and I lean around Sam, who is gripping the arm   
rest and grinding his own right foot down into the floorboard. I   
check out the clock. It's only 7:00.  
  
"Your breaks working up there Sam?" Toby asks. Toby doesn't seem   
nervous. Then again, Toby grew up in New York. He's ridden in taxis   
all his life.  
  
Sam finally relaxes a little as we live to see the exit ramp,   
although personally I am wondering when Andretti is going to stop   
going 70 mph, more so when I see a red light swinging in a gusty   
wind, and the tail lights of the car stopped before it.  
  
"Our Father who art in Heaven," I murmur as Josh finally decides to   
break, and the car bucks and protests and eventually rolls to a stop   
inches from the other car's bumper.  
  
"Plenty of time," Josh says with a smirk over at Sam and into the   
rear view mirror at us.  
  
"And it's nice that we get to see what radio station he's listening   
to," Sam mutters.  
  
GPS is putting up an absolutely ardent protest, ordering us back on   
the interstate. Over and over again it tells us to get back onto the   
ramp and merge onto the interstate again.  
  
"That's why this sucks. See? It isn't smarter than we are," Sam   
mumbles, and reaches forward to turn it off.  
  
Josh slaps at his hand. "Don't! We will not silence the protest of   
the GPS. He is entitled to a peaceful protest. Although he's   
starting to sound less peaceful."  
  
I lean forward, pushing my face between Josh and Sam's shoulders,   
and look at the latter. "He does know there's actually not really a   
little man in there, right?"  
  
"It's unclear," Sam replies.  
  
"What in God's name are we doing?" Toby growls from behind all three   
of us.  
  
"Eating. I'm hungry. It's the Waffle House. You just don't see those   
anywhere, you know."  
  
"Except that you see them everywhere," Toby counters, "which makes   
the fact that I avoid them on a regular basis a much more impressive   
accomplishment, really."  
  
"They have pie! You're telling me that you don't like the Waffle   
House?" Sam asks, turning around. "Didn't you go to college?"  
  
"Yes, and I believe the two things are mutually exclusive."  
  
"So what did you do when you needed a study break?" Josh asks.  
  
"I never needed a study break. I have an infinite capacity for   
learning," he retorts. And looks to Sam. "You go to the gym. You eat   
well. You're concerned about, you know, dying. And you're telling me   
you like this?"  
  
Sam nods happily. "It's a treat."  
  
"You're a little sassy, Tobster," I add with a smile.  
  
He turns to me with an expression as close to incredulous as Toby   
can get. "Surely to God you're on my side in this."  
  
"Bring the waffles!" I say with enthusiasm. "Oh God," Toby says,   
without any.  
  
*  
  
I have to say, I'm a little amazed by the Waffle House's ability to   
stay packed at virtually any time of the day or night. I believe   
I've never been inside of one where I didn't have to wait my turn   
for a booth. Even with a winter storm bearing down on the West   
Coast, the usual assortment of students, truckers, and people it's   
safer not to wonder about the profession of are mingling together.   
It's the same hazy smoke-filled, glass encased, text book littered,   
haggard waitress staffed, orange tinted, juke-box blaring old   
country hit and American rock atmosphere that you'd find in any of   
the millions (I may be exaggerating here, but drive a stretch of I-  
75 in a campaign bus sometime if you think so) of Waffle House   
locations across the United States.   
  
I am horrified by it and disgusted, and I love every minute of being   
here.  
  
We are clearly strangers to this place and heads swivel and watch us   
as we cram ourselves into a booth by the window. Toby is practically   
clawing at the glass to get out. Josh slides in across from him. I   
leave Sam to deal with Toby and take a place beside Josh. I watch a   
group of students working physics problems at the counter and wonder   
what college we could possibly be close to.   
  
"I feel the grease accumulating on me," Toby mutters. "I actually   
feel it in the air."  
  
"Yeah. It's great isn't it." Josh agrees.  
  
Samuel N. Seaborne smiles brightly at the waitress who sort of   
stomps, sort of saunters over to our table and stands glaring down   
at us, pen touching her pad, drawn-on eyebrows raised expectantly.  
  
Now Sam is a pretty humble guy, but he's not ignorant to his own   
charm. He's used to flashing that smile he's flashing up at our   
waitress right now and seeing people's reservations about him melt   
away. I've seen women lose their ability to say words when targeted   
with his very pretty face. He's guileless and handsome, and his   
eyes carry the breath-stealing warmth of an August wind. His charm   
even works on Toby Ziegler to an extent, so you can imagine that   
he's pretty confident in his ability to warm our waitress up.  
  
"Hello. How are you today?" Sam inquires, leans forward and reads   
the waitresses' name tag, "Angelica. Well that's a pretty name."  
  
`Angelica' who looks to be about thirty-five, a chain smoker, and an   
axe murderer on the weekends, purses her red-painted lips and glares   
at Sam, her face frozen into an expression of tried patience on the   
very edge of expiration.   
  
"You don't have enough money in your genuine leather wallet to make   
it worth my while to pretend that I can stand you. I'll be back   
when you are ready to order," Angelica tells Sam and turns to half-  
stomp, half-saunter off. "Or not."   
  
"I think she likes you," Josh snickers.  
  
"Bitch," I say, and look after her, spoiling for a fight a little   
bit.  
  
"I like her," Toby says and for the first time since we left the   
airport, grins.  
  
Sam has just now regained the power of speech and looks wounded and   
indignant and stunned. He says, "well, that was uncalled for."  
  
*  
  
I was going to order a salad, I swear to God I was. When I went to   
order it though, silently daring Angelica to say the wrong thing to   
me so that I would have an excuse to show her what happens when   
Southern Oregon bitch meets DC Bitch, Josh and Sam both gasped and   
put up a loud protest.  
  
"Salad at the Waffle House?"  
  
"What? You can't do that!"  
  
And even Toby added, "you really want to try this place's produce?"  
  
I'm only reminding myself of this to justify why I am wolfing down a   
dripping patty-melt and shoving forkfuls of hash browns, scattered,   
covered, and smothered, into my mouth. They made me do it.  
  
Toby and Sam, who were done with their meals long ago, are sitting   
and watching me and Josh still eat with sort of morbid fascination.  
  
"If they live till morning, I'll be impressed," Toby mumbles to Sam,   
who tenses because Angelica is approaching.  
  
She glances into Sam's coffee cup, which is dryer than the   
Sahara. "More?" She growls, with a threatening look.  
  
She turns away before Sam shakes his head, but I swallow my mouthful   
of greasy meat and shout at her retreating back. "Hey, Happy! Yes he   
wants some more! He paid for it! And I'll have another Diet Coke and   
a piece of apple pie, grilled, and my other friend here needs some   
more Dr. Pepper…do you need to write this down?"  
  
Angelica whirls and meets my gaze and we wage a battle of wills. I'm   
suddenly aware that I'm sitting very straight in the booth and that   
Josh, Sam, and Toby are a little cowed down. They've seen this look   
on my face before. They know to get out of the way.  
  
"Run, Angelica, run," Josh whispers to his waffle.  
  
I don't let my gaze drop from Angelica's, and I'm aware that the   
people nearby, people who have probably been waited on by Angelica   
before are watching us, half fearful, half awed, but mostly   
entertained. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do if Angelica   
comes at me with nails and teeth, but I think that although I don't   
outweigh her, I've got a good half-foot on her height.  
  
She narrows her eyes and then stomps (no saunter) to our table   
again, snatching Sam's mug, my glass, Josh's glass. "Anything else?"   
She asks, glaring at me and daring me to say anything else.  
  
Which is what persuades me to add sweetly, "service with a smile?"   
as she walks away.  
  
Josh looks like he's about to say something to me when a shadow   
falls across our table. And I turn and look up and up and up and see   
a bear of a man standing there, staring right at me.  
  
"Hello there, Baby," he says with a grin.  
  
I take in his flannel shirt and well-worn jeans and admit to myself   
that he wears them well. His jaw is a little square, but it gives   
him a hard sort of look that is appealing. His hair is black and   
falls carelessly across his forehead, almost into his very nice   
brown eyes. He looks like he knows all of this already, so I see no   
need to tell him so.  
  
"Hello there Lumberjack Joe," I say flippantly and turn back to   
Josh, who isn't looking at me, but still is staring at the giant   
standing beside me. His lips are parted slightly, the comment he was   
going to make before lost somewhere between his vocal cords and his   
lips. In the window behind Josh, I see that my new friend is still   
firmly entrenched in his spot on the grease-slick floor.  
  
"It must have hurt," he says down to me in an offhand way as I turn   
back around, getting the idea that he's not going anywhere long   
before he gets the idea that I would like him to.  
  
"What?" I say, annoyed now by the way his eyes keep dropping down   
and further down my body. I mean, I don't mind being checked out,   
but there's something to be said for subtlety.   
  
"I said it must have hurt."  
  
"Yeah, I heard. What the hell are you talking about?"  
  
"When you fell straight from heaven."  
  
Toby coughs to cover his laughter, but Josh's hand finds my knee   
under the table and he squeezes in warning. What Josh doesn't know   
is that I'm extremely ticklish there and it's all I can do not to   
yelp. At the same time, Sam's foot comes down over mine, putting   
steady pressure on my toes. How well they know me.  
  
The fear is practically oozing from them. They're afraid I'm going   
to say something which is going to make Lumberjack Joe turn on them,   
or that they're going to have to defend my honor in some way. I   
almost snort with amusement at that thought, but I'm far too   
irritated by this man who isn't even creative enough to come up with   
a decent pick-up line.  
  
I have no response for him though, so I obey Josh and Sam's wishes   
for the moment and just stare, with what I'm sure is a horrified   
expression on my face.   
  
Thus encouraged, he continues, "You must not be from around here."   
  
"Yeah, okay" I say, in my most dismissive tone of voice, "I'm going   
to go back to eating with my friends now. We're done here."  
  
I turn back to my nearly finished plate, but the shadow doesn't lift   
from the table, and as I pick up my fork, Josh and Sam still haven't   
moved. Even Toby seems a little uneasy now.  
  
Lumberjack Joe chuckles and reaches out to touch me under my chin,   
titling my head back to him. I'm so stunned by his audacity that I   
let him do it.   
  
Josh's hand lifts from my knee and he starts to push himself up,   
saying to Lumberjack, "hey, don't do that," at the same time Sam and   
Toby half-rise too.  
  
"I've watched you since you came in. And I've been wondering. Do   
those legs go all the way up?"  
  
Toby suddenly sounds like he's choking, and it's not from laughter   
now.  
  
"Now is the point where you don't touch me anymore," I say and my   
voice is starting to shake a little bit, from anger. I jerk back,   
away from his touch.  
  
He smiles and turns away, only to grab a chair from the counter   
behind him. He turns it around and straddles it, resting his very   
large forearms across the back. He's blocking my way out of the booth   
and I am now officially uncomfortable.  
  
I realize that I might be overreacting. We're in a public place. He   
hasn't said anything overtly or even covertly menacing. But I don't   
like how he's got me cornered, and I don't like it that he refuses   
to leave after I tell him to, and I don't like the look in his eye,   
and I don't care how anyone else feels about that.  
  
"I didn't invite you to sit down. In fact, I'm inviting you to   
leave," I say, quickly crossing the line to fury.   
  
"Aw, come on now, Girlie. I just want to talk to you is all. Give me   
a few minutes. You'll see I'm not so bad."  
  
"Okay, you know what, I won't see if you're so bad. I've been very   
clear here. I am going to go back to eating with my friends here.   
Leave me alone."  
  
"Now don't say that. You don't even know me," Lumberjack says and I   
think that there's a beat of time that stretches for longer than the   
rest as I watch his elbow slide off the chair back and see his hand   
reach down to rest on my knee. There's nothing particularly   
lecherous in it, really. But the touch is like a burn and I, on pure   
reflex, swing out with my designer booted toes and catch him square   
in the shin. Hard.   
  
So hard in fact, that I'm fairly certain I've done damage to myself.   
My yelp is as loud as his, and there is sick-pain that rips up my   
leg and into my stomach.  
  
He leaps up, loses his balance, and crashes to the floor, looking   
dazed. He brings both hands to cover his shin, and he's gone pale. I   
meant to kick him. I did not mean to kick him quite so hard. My toes   
are pulsing with pain inside their leather prison. I seriously think   
I've got broken bones here.  
  
I'm still sitting, half-frozen, but completely defiant of this man.   
I was justified in retribution. I have no qualms about kicking him.  
  
Afraid he won't see it the same way, Sam and Toby are instantly on   
their feet and Josh is clamoring over the table to join them in   
forming a wall between me and him. It's really kind of a sweet   
gesture in a humorous sort of way, because it's like the Incredible   
Hulk vs. The Smurfs here, but it's also unnecessary.   
  
And the last thing I need to do is to end up defending their honor   
as well as my own.  
  
Lumberjack finally stands up, without putting much weight on his   
left leg, and looks over their heads at me. I am really trying not   
to look smug but I hear that note in my voice as I say, "I did warn   
you."  
  
"What the hell is wrong with you!" His voice is approaching a shout,   
and once again I notice that the entire Waffle House has given over   
to silence. The jukebox has even run out of songs. "I was paying you   
a compliment! I just wanted to talk to you! That's all!"  
  
"And she told you to leave her alone, didn't she?" Josh growls, and   
his voice doesn't even jump up the way it does sometimes when he's   
nervous. He's Congress-ass-kicking Josh right this moment.  
  
Lumberjack Joe doesn't even look at Josh. He's still watching   
me. "Somebody ought to teach you some manners, Lady."   
  
It isn't really a threat. Not an explicit one. I don't think he even   
meant it as a suggestion that he be the one to teach me manners. But   
the words, more than the way he says them, cause great waves of   
nervousness to roll over me, and I'm caught between wanting to slide   
further back in the booth, or stand up to closer meet his height so   
I can better scratch his eyes out. But as I am, sitting here behind   
Sam, Toby, and Josh, and having this huge man glare at me, I'm just   
a little worried. Just a little, I tell myself.   
  
Josh's fists are clenching and I'm thinking to myself, please God,   
Josh. Do NOT put up your dukes. I'm not so sure that Josh has dukes   
in the first place, but I'm definitely sure that he thinks he does.  
  
Toby, thank God, is at his greatest in times of crisis. Not that   
this is a crisis on the scale of other things we see on a daily   
basis, but this is a new one for them. They are doing admirably, but   
I wish I could reverse this whole thing, because I'm afraid it's   
going to get out of hand. And there's going to be a killing. Or   
worse yet, an embarrassing story. Then Leo will kill all of us.  
  
My toes hurt *bad*.  
  
"You should know something about her before you do something stupid   
like make another threat." Toby tells him, in that low voice that is   
more unsettling coming from him than the loudest yell that   
Lumberjack's got.   
  
"And what's that, Baldy?"  
  
Toby smiles, again without any humor. "I'm going to use small words   
and speak slowly here, okay? The President of the United States   
thinks of this woman like a daughter. And it's only fair to tell you   
that if you don't turn around and I mean now, the Secret Service   
will make your life very bad."  
  
Lumberjack Joe starts to laugh then, looking between Josh and Sam to   
me. "You're all a bunch of weirdoes. Crazy. I don't want anything to   
do with you. But someone ought to knock that look off your face,   
Girlie."  
  
Sam, who is right in front of me, is digging frantically in his back   
pocket and I have a vision of him whipping out a switch blade and   
embedding it in this guy's gut and I'm seriously freaked out by that   
thought so I finally push myself up off the booth seat before they   
do anything stupid.  
  
"Here!" Sam says before I can say anything, and I see that he's   
opening his wallet and I think I will stab Sam to death with a fork   
if he tries to buy me from this bully.   
  
Not to worry though, because Sam only pulls out a piece of well-read   
looking newspaper. I see a glimpse of it as he unfolds it and   
realize what it is. The picture from the Washington Post of the   
President on Inauguration Day. I'm standing beside Sam to the   
President's left. Josh and half of Toby are to the right. Sam   
extends it in front of Lumberjack's nose and then quickly yanks it   
away as soon as recognition and surprise register on Lumberjack's   
face.  
  
Sam traditionally holds his temper better than all of us combined,   
but when he's had enough, he's quite simply, had enough. It looks   
like now is that time. Leaning forward, putting himself directly   
into Lumberjack's face and reach, his eyes have nothing of the   
warmth in them that was there before. His voice is more of a growl   
than I have ever heard it, and there are little prickles of   
something uneasy along the base of my spine as he tells   
Lumberjack, "my suggestion is that you walk away like she asked you   
to do several times. The Secret Service would love the chance to   
take you out, but not as much as I would."  
  
I can't think of another instance or time when I wouldn't have   
laughed heartily to hear Sam make a threat like this. But I'm not   
laughing now.   
  
And neither is Lumberjack. Holding Sam's gaze, he backs up and   
walks, not quickly mind you, but away, which is all I care about. I   
don't know if it's the evidence that we really are connected with   
the President, the threat of the Secret Service, or Sam that makes   
him go, and I couldn't care less.  
  
The somewhat explosive contents of my stomach have settled for the   
most part and my heart has dropped out from under my collarbone. My   
foot still hurts though. "Ouch," I say out loud. I am unable to   
bring myself to put weight on it.  
  
Sam watches Lumberjack for a second longer with something like   
regret etched in the hard lines bracketing his mouth. Then he drops   
his head for a moment to fold up the picture of all of us on our   
greatest day and slips it carefully back into a credit card slot of   
his wallet.   
  
Toby and Josh are a little stunned, standing there as Sam turns back   
around, the rage gone out of his face a little, but there's still a   
tenseness and an anger that makes him a little less pretty and a   
little more rugged and a thousand times more attractive.  
  
Officially as a woman who is perfectly capable of defending herself,   
I'm more than a little annoyed by this macho kind of toe-to-toe   
chest-thumping contest that just took place.  
  
Unofficially, I put both hands on the back of Sam's neck and give   
him a brief kiss on the lips.  
  
Soon, Angelica reappears with two plates of apple pie. One she   
throws down before me, with such force that my dessert almost slides   
off the plate. The other, she sets carefully before Sam with a   
brief, but unmistakable, look of admiration.   
  
"On me," she says. With a smile poorly concealed in the corner of   
her mouth.  



	3. I Saw a Shimmering Light

Chapter 3: I Saw a Shimmering Light  
  
I'm standing at the briefing podium in only my underwear. The blue   
ones and they match the curtain behind me. My skin has risen in waves   
of chills. I've dropped my notes, and I see pages and pages piling   
around my bare feet. They all say "Qumar." Lumberjack Joe is there   
too, standing where Carol usually stands, and he's ogling me.   
  
When he moves, he covers the distance in a single stride and his   
fingers close completely around my wrist. The pressure is nearly   
breaking my bones and I fight him, but he's stronger, and I am pulled   
out from behind the semi-shelter of the podium, and onto what is   
suddenly very much like a theater stage. Slowly, though I cry out   
and try to break free, I am forced to my knees before him and I   
finally give in, and bow my head, half-naked, skin now burning under   
unforgiving stage lights.  
  
And then I look out in the audience where my reporters should be, and   
there are hundreds and hundreds of women wearing Burkas. I can only   
see their eyes, which are full of betrayal and disappointment.   
  
"I'm sorry," I say. "I'm sorry." And I keep saying it over and over.   
  
I look to the back of the room and Toby and the President are   
standing there, and I know all I have to do is to ask them for help,   
and they will come forward, and this will stop. But I can't, because   
I'm too proud to ask them.  
  
One woman stands up and pulls off her shawl, and both of her eyes are   
blackened. Another with a bloody nose. On and on they go across the   
rows and then back, one after the other: mutilated, beaten, bloodied.  
  
And I can do nothing, held in place by Lumberjack, kneeling before   
the battered, tortured faces of the women of Qumar.   
  
*  
  
I wake up with my heart surging against my rib cage and then back   
into my shoulder blades and my breath hitching in my throat. There   
are no stage lights, no Lumberjack, no blue curtain, and I am clothed   
in the jeans and sweater I have worn all day. Still, in the   
irrational grip of the dream, I am frozen for a minute, watching the   
yellow line roll toward the hood and disappear under the car.  
  
"Bad dream?" Sam, who is beside me, driving, asks quietly.   
  
I don't answer him just yet. I sweep my hair nervously behind my ear   
and breathe deeply for a minute, still waiting to calm down. The   
image that jarred me out of sleep stays with me though. All those   
women.   
  
Seeking escape from it, I twist to look behind me, and in the   
headlights from a passing car, I see that Toby and Josh are sleeping   
in the backseat.  
  
It is midnight. There are lightning flashes in the sky, and the wind   
buffets the car hard. Sam has the steering wheel in a white-knuckle   
grasp, and I'm not so sure he should be watching me worriedly instead   
of the road.  
  
"Yeah, bad dream…I was in the briefing room—you know what, never   
mind," I say, changing my mind about telling him what I was dreaming.   
It just feels too personal.  
  
"Okay," he says in his soothing way as I turn to the window. And bite   
back a scream. If my heart was pounding before, now it is driving   
into my chest with the threat of breaking through altogether. Because   
in an instantaneous flash of lightning I take in a guardrail, and   
then nothing but air that drops I don't know how many hundred feet to   
the foamy sea below. It's a fall that would be broken only by the   
hulking blackness of the rocks jutting from the churning water.   
  
Perhaps I'm a bit slow, but for the first time I realize we're no   
longer on a four lane interstate, but on a winding two lane.  
  
"Sam!" I gasp and then add in a whisper. "You turned it off, didn't   
you? Where the hell are we? We must have taken a wrong turn   
somewhere. There's the ocean out there!"  
  
I point out the window, as if he could have missed it. He starts to   
answer, then grows quiet as he maneuvers through a particularly   
vicious turn, which is so tight that I begin to think we're going to   
end up rear-ending ourselves.  
  
"Yeah. While all of you have been napping, I've been navigating.   
There was a bad accident on the interstate back there. So I cut cross   
country. This is the Pacific Coastal Highway. It'll take us down the   
coast to San Francisco."  
  
"Did you consult Fredrick?"  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Fredrick. It's the name I've decided to give the little GPS guy."  
  
"Okay, now you're aware that it isn't a real guy too, right?"   
  
I shrug; I'm non-committal.  
  
"I've silenced Fredrick. Bound and gagged him, in a manner of   
speaking."  
  
"See, it isn't funny when you call him Fredrick," I say.  
  
Sam sighs. "I turned the GPS off."  
  
"Josh wouldn't be pleased."  
  
"Josh is asleep."  
  
"Won't it take us longer?" I wonder.   
  
"Well, not as much as you'd think with the four hour shut down they   
were talking about back there," Sam shrugs. "Besides, this is a much   
more interesting drive."  
  
"Indeed," I mutter as I risk peering down into the emptiness not five   
feet from the car. The massive boulders stand solemnly in the water   
like tombstones, and I don't like the comparison I've just made at   
all.  
  
We ride in companionable silence. I might have considered going back   
to sleep, but first of all, it doesn't seem fair to leave Sam to   
himself with the weather turning bad, and secondly, I don't believe I   
can sleep knowing that there's a sheer drop-off inches from my right   
shoulder.  
  
Suddenly, Sam asks me, "if you could play any instrument which would   
it be?" Taken aback, I glance at him and he grins and urges, "come   
on. Which one?"  
  
"Fiddle," I say quickly.  
  
"Really?" He asks in surprise and laughs softly. "Why?"  
  
"Ever heard `Devil Went Down to Georgia?'" I ask, by way of   
explanation.  
  
"Yes, but it's not something I'm proud of."  
  
"Okay then. Never mind. Your turn."  
  
"Saxaphone."  
  
"There's not one of those in 'Devil Went Down To Georgia.'"   
  
"Thus the basis of its appeal. You go," he says.  
  
"Go what?"  
  
"Ask a question."  
  
I watch another streak of lightning lash at the unruly sea. "Most   
terrifying act of nature."  
  
"Tornado. Hands down."  
  
"I'm going to have to go with Volcanic Eruption."  
  
"I don't think that counts."  
  
"Why not? It's an act of nature."  
  
Sam ponders. "I see how it's gonna be. Okay then, you asked for it.   
I see your volcanic eruption and I raise you one giant asteroid   
slamming into the earth."  
  
I am shaking my head before he's done. "I'm sorry, but I have to call   
you on that. An Asteroid is not an act of nature. It's an other   
worldly type thing."  
  
"Tidal Wave," Sam substitutes. "Tall enough to kick your volcano's   
ass."  
  
"Earthquake to open up an abyss big enough to swallow your tidal   
wave."  
  
He thinks hard, then relents. "Okay, you win that one," Sam sighs and   
I, of course, gracefully (or otherwise) agree. He asks, "If you had   
to lose your hearing or your voice, which would you choose?"  
  
"Oh, we're in the big time now, huh? I'm gonna have to say I'd get   
rid of my voice…I can't imagine not being able to hear music. Then   
again, I couldn't do my job, which most of the time, I do love,   
without my voice…no, but the music…I'm going to say I'd rather lose   
my voice."  
  
Sam thinks for a moment and I'm quiet as we follow another hairpin   
curve. "I think I'd have to say I'd want to lose my voice too. I   
can't imagine not being able to hear my words coming out of the   
President's mouth."  
  
"Truth. You're never jealous? Don't you ever have the urge to stand   
up there and say the words you write? I don't understand that about   
you and Toby."  
  
"I'm not saying I will never give speeches. But it's about the   
writing of it for me, not the delivery. It's about the words and the   
rhythm and the conviction that is built into the phrases, just   
waiting to be brought out by the speaker. It's about the rise and   
fall of the sentence and the drama of the pauses. It's about watching   
people stand up and clap in the right places, about watching them   
smile, about watching tears come up in their eyes. And I get to write   
it sometimes, but the hearing of it is when it comes alive. That's   
when I love what I do the most."  
  
I smile at him, but he can't see that I do because he's watching the   
road and I think that he may be blushing a little bit.   
  
I'm still learning about Sam. He's a generous, sweet man with a   
great passion for what he does and a bone-deep conviction that we can   
change things. That we can save the world. We think of him as naïve   
sometimes, but I wonder if maybe optimistic and determined aren't   
better words to describe him.   
  
And occasionally, when I've seen flashes of what I saw tonight back   
at the Waffle House, where his anger and protectiveness come forward   
and he's suddenly as fierce a man as I've ever seen, I wonder how I   
ever thought him as anything but formidable.  
  
"You're an enigma," I tell Sam.  
  
He smiles and says, "Really? I like that."  
  
I feel a gust of wind slam into the passenger side of the car and I   
look out worriedly. When lightning flashes in the sky, I can see that   
the waves of low-lying clouds are as wind-tossed and restless as the   
sea they mirror and meet on the horizon.   
  
"No ice yet?" I wonder.  
  
"They were saying on the radio a while ago that it looks like it may   
have warmed up a few degrees with the cloud cover. Now they're   
thinking it's just going to be heavy rain, and the front has been   
stalled over the ocean for a bit. I think it's coming in now."  
  
"Flip Spicerack?" I ask, because in his talking about weather I   
remember his mention of the weatherman's name in the airport.  
  
"Spiceland. Flip Spiceland. Not Spicerack. I mean, come on, CJ. That   
would be ridiculous."  
  
I snort softly. "That can't be his real name."  
  
"Well, I've thought about this more than I should admit," Sam   
argues. "And I gotta say, I think it has to be his real name. Who in   
the hell would choose that name of their own free will?"  
  
"You've got a good point there, Spanky."  
  
"And we're back to Spanky. A name I didn't choose of my own free   
will."  
  
"It always comes back to the Spanky," I say helpfully.  
  
We grow quiet again. It's not often that I get to spend time with   
just Sam, so this is both enjoyable and unusual. I have a feeling   
that he's thinking the same thing.   
  
I ask him quietly, "did I thank you back there for what you guys   
tried to do for me?"  
  
"I think somewhere in the middle of the ass chewing you gave us when   
we got back into the car, about how you were an independent woman and   
how you didn't need us to--and I'm quoting you here--`bring the   
Neanderthal,' there was an implied thank you. And there was the kiss,   
which I, personally, was grateful for."  
  
"Good. I was right, you know. I can take care of myself."  
  
"And if I didn't believe it before, I sure did after you kicked the   
hell out of the guy." Sam laughs out loud and shakes his head, "CJ, I   
swear to God, I'll never forget that. It's a high point of my life."  
  
"He deserved it," I reiterate. And wiggle my toes experimentally. Ow.   
Seriously. There is pain.  
  
"And worse," Sam agrees. Then looks at me. "You'll have to forgive   
Toby, Josh, and me. But we couldn't really just sit there when   
someone was messing with our girl, you know." We smile at each other,   
and he turns back to the road and wonders, "so, have you had to kick   
many other men in the shins over the course of your life, CJ?"  
  
I feel my cheeks heating. "No, that would be the first."  
  
"I'm surprised," Sam replies softly and I smile at the implicit   
compliment there. He's lying. I'm very clearly not the sort of woman   
that men just flock to for the sole purpose of flirtation, but I   
appreciate him for saying it. I'm still flushing, so I change the   
subject. "What is the high point in your life?"   
  
"The President's Inauguration." He answers with no hesitation, and I   
might have guessed that, considering he carries a picture of it   
around in his wallet.   
  
"It took me a little longer for it to sink in, I think. Mine was the   
day I walked into the West Wing, and my office, for the first time."  
  
"That was a good day too," Sam agrees. "I remember, I kept half-  
expecting someone to come in and tell me that there'd been a horrible   
mistake. The votes had been miscounted. Or at the very least, the   
President had come to his senses and decided to bring in someone who   
knew what he was doing."  
  
I murmur dryly, "yeah, well, I still expect that to happen to me. Any   
day now."  
  
"CJ…you may have the hardest job of all of us…except the President,   
and I'm still not sure it isn't a toss-up there. You do it better   
than we've seen anyone do it yet. And the better you do it, the   
harder it gets, because the more they want to push you. You stand up   
there and nail it nearly every time. You have to know that."  
  
"Not with Haiti."  
  
"There was no winning with Haiti. We were already bleeding too bad   
from the MS," Sam said, shaking his head. There's a note of   
bitterness when he adds, "and they all should have known it."  
  
I'm really not fishing for compliments here, but I can't deny that   
these words are sort of a balm for my raw ego. I say   
tentatively, "you know…Josh told me later that you stood up for me,   
even when they didn't. He apologized for it, but he wanted me to   
know that you'd stood by me the whole time, in front of them, and in   
front of Leo. And I think at the time I was too miserable or too   
embarrassed or too something to acknowledge it, but I haven't   
forgotten about it."  
  
"You'd do the same for me." He says it with certainty, and I realize   
he's right. I would. Toby, Josh, and Leo have brilliant political   
minds. So do me and Sam. But we've got some sort of loyalty that runs   
a little bit deeper in us than most, I think.  
  
"If the high point was inauguration, what's the low point?" I ask.  
  
"Before this spring, I would have told you the night at the Newseum.   
Now, I think it may be when they told me about the MS."  
  
"Mmm." I say by way of agreement, and the terror, confusion, and   
betrayal of that moment, sitting before Leo comes back to me. But the   
fact that I was lied to isn't why it's the low point. It's the low   
point because with it comes the realization that this man that I'm   
willing to dedicate my life to for these years, this man who is   
brilliant and generous and everything this country has waited for in   
a leader for my entire lifetime, is sick. And mortal. And fallible.   
Capable of a lie. In danger of falling down. In danger of losing. In   
danger of dying.   
  
"Sam, what do you think it says about us that the best and worst   
moments of our life revolve around this administration?"  
  
Sam sighs and is silent for so long I wonder if he is going to answer   
me. Finally, "I think it means that we're about to fall down hard,   
CJ. But it's too late now."  
  
"It's the fall that's going to kill you," I say, recalling a   
conversation I'd had with Josh in the days after I'd been told.  
  
It's a moment after that when the bottom simply falls out of the sky,   
and rain, which isn't even recognizable as rain in that there are no   
individual drops of it, but rather blinding sheets, comes down. Sam   
comes to a stop because visibility is very quickly zero.  
  
He searches for and finds the windshield wipers and we sit on the   
deserted Pacific Highway for a minute, our headlights illuminating   
the water driving upon us in between the fast swish of the wiper   
blades.   
  
"So I guess they meant it, about the storm," I say offhandedly.  
  
"Yeah." Sam gets his bearings, straightens up in the seat and starts   
to drive very slowly. The radio station he is listening to has been   
interrupted by severe weather alerts, and hearing about 75 mph gusts   
isn't helping my nerves at all when they are simultaneously rocking   
the car. Thankfully, the wind is coming from the sea, so it's pushing   
us away from, rather than toward, the cliffs, or I believe I'd insist   
on stopping. And tying myself to something on solid ground.  
  
Without consulting Sam, I search for music of some sort. There's only   
one channel that I can get with decent clarity, and it appears to be   
playing only Christmas carols. Well, that's appropriate. It's   
December, after all.   
  
"How can they still be asleep?" I wonder incredulously, turning to   
look at Toby and Josh. Josh's head has slipped down a little bit and   
is very nearly touching Toby's shoulder. The windshield sounds as if   
it may cave in to the force of the rain.  
  
Sam doesn't hear me, because he's too busy handling the car. It   
really is a job right now. I sit back quietly and re-cross my legs,   
and watch the road wind precariously through the raindrops.  
  
It probably rains all out for forty-five minutes, and it's an   
exhausting stretch of highway. Sam is tense and straight-faced and I   
don't want to say anything that might distract him. When the rain   
lets up, it does so gradually, so that I don't notice that I've   
loosened my hold on the console and the door handle, and that I'm not   
grinding my good foot into the floorboard anymore.  
  
In fact, when I realize the worst of it has passed, I'm unconsciously   
singing `Silent Night' with the radio.   
  
I'm a little surprised when Sam joins me, taking low harmony to my   
melody. I would have maybe expected him to be a tenor but he's a   
baritone, and his voice has a lilting, full quality that I find   
incredible. I'm a second Soprano, and not nearly so talented as Sam,   
but I leave the singer on the radio to the melody and take the   
harmony above her.   
  
The car is rich with the texture of three-part harmony and at one   
point, my throat gets almost too tight for sound and tears rise   
against my lower lashes, because this song always moves me, but not   
so much as our spontaneous singing of it. Toward the end of the song,   
we start losing the station to static and interrupting frequencies,   
and without missing a note, Sam turns it off and switches to the   
melody effortlessly. He, like me, knows every verse to the carol,   
even the original German.   
  
When we are finished, we drive in what is becoming a silent night as   
the worst of the storm stalks all eastern destinations of ours, and   
smile to ourselves.  
  
Toby's voice, husky with sleep, drifts softly over the   
seatbacks. "That was nice."  
  
We are both startled, and simultaneously pleased and embarrassed by   
this praise. It is a gentle moment. A peaceful one. And I again think   
that I love these people as much, if not more, than I've ever loved   
anyone before. I forget that they make me crazy and that they shut me   
out and that occasionally, they have boys named Morton leave turkeys   
loose in my office. I forget that we're coming up on a very scary   
time, and that we don't know how we're going to come out the other   
side. And it's just me and my boys.  
  
"What the hell is the ocean doing out there?" Toby asks a moment   
later, voice noticeably less sleepy.  
  
"Sam navigated," I explain, a note of pride in my voice because I am   
in the know. "And he didn't ask Fredrick for anything at all."  
  
"What the hell?" Toby says, but before I can answer, clarifies, "I   
don't care."  
  
I don't know why I'm so sleepy. I've slept more on this car trip   
than I do in a night in DC. I'm doing my best to stay awake and   
alert and talk with Sam and Toby, but my eyes sting and a yawn builds   
repeatedly against the roof of my mouth.   
  
In the backseat, Josh moans and mumbles something that sounds a lot   
like Donna, and the three of us sit in freaked-out disgust, but by   
tacit agreement, choose to say nothing.  
  
Toby insists that we turn it back to NPR, explaining that as a Jewish   
man, one Christmas carol is all he is allowed.   
  
"One a year?" I wonder.  
  
"No. A lifetime," he answers, and I am pretty sure he's making this   
up, but I turn it back to talk radio.  



	4. Some Dance to Forget

Chapter 4: Some Dance to Forget  
  
On the other side of a very light sleep, there is blinding   
whiteness, piercing even against my closed lids. My eyes fly open,   
and the light sears into them. It's painful and disorienting. There   
seems to be nothing else but the brightness; all my other senses are   
dulled into insignificance.   
  
Headlights. Coming right at us. Then, well, *not* as our car dives   
to the right and the guardrail comes rushing toward me.  
  
That's not really accurate. The rail stays where it is. It is us   
rushing towards it.  
  
Sam is cursing as he manhandles the car, jerking it back to the left   
again, keeping us from the edge of the drop-off. There's a sound   
like an explosion, and the hood of the car tilts precariously to the   
right. I close my eyes and we are going forward and sideways at the   
same time, and Sam's forearm suddenly crashes against my chest and   
forces me backwards, further into the seat.  
  
I open my eyes at one point and we are spinning, slower than you'd   
think, sliding across wet pavement as the car makes horrible,   
horrible noises that make my teeth ache in addition to everything   
else.   
  
The chaos is illuminated by high beams: sea, guardrail, yellow line,   
rocky hillside. Sea, guardrail, yellow line, rocky hillside. I look   
down and see a trail of orange sparks being thrown up from the right   
front tire. Closing my eyes again, I fight my stomach, which is   
moving in much the same way as the car.  
  
When we come to a stop, and when I dare to open my eyes, we're   
sitting perpendicular to the double yellow lines—the same lines the   
pick-up truck that almost killed us had just crossed. We're in the   
middle of the road, but it doesn't matter because the highway is   
deserted, except for the somewhat Satanic glow of the rogue truck's   
taillights. I look past Sam and watch the vehicle until it flies   
around a bend and is gone from my sight forever, the only hint it   
had ever been there the taste of adrenaline and bile in my mouth.   
  
We're facing the high wall of the cliff we were winding around the   
edge of. We nearly hit it head on.   
  
This is so Wyle E. Coyote that I just can't even handle it right now.  
  
Toby speaks first. "Everybody?"  
  
Josh is very quiet and I twist around and look at him and see that   
his face is completely without color, stark in the headlights   
bouncing off the rock in front of us and back into the car. I can   
tell from the way Toby is looking at me that my face must look much   
the same. It wasn't a pleasant way to be awakened for either Josh or   
me.  
  
Toby leans forward and surprises me by touching my forehead, pushing   
my hair away. His fingers whisper across my brow bone. I stare at   
him, too stunned to move. His hand falls away slowly and he   
explains, "I thought you'd cut your head. Just a shadow."  
  
"Sam?" Josh asks finally from directly behind me, finding his voice   
before I find mine. He sounds a little high pitched and airy.  
  
"Did you see that? Son of a bitch," Sam growls, then says   
louder, "we almost went off the edge!"  
  
"Yeah, but we didn't. We're okay," Josh says quietly. Reassuring   
himself, I think.  
  
"We blew a tire." Sam kills the engine, and I feel anxious. I want   
to tell him that he should move the car from the middle of the road.   
And then wonder why. With the exception of one truck that caused all   
of this, we haven't seen anyone else in several hours.  
  
"Okay," Toby says. "We'll fix it."  
  
The lights are still on and the car is making an annoying little   
dinging noise to let us know that.  
  
The Pacific Highway. After midnight and a violent winter storm. In a   
car that apparently has just broken.  
  
It's not a really good situation. It was also written in the stars   
that this should happen, so I'm not really as stunned as Sam, Josh   
and Toby seem to be.  
  
Instead, I'm struck most by the absolute, all-encompassing quiet.   
We're perched too high on a cliff to hear the waves' assault on the   
rocky shore far below from inside the car. The constant hum of the   
motor and the drone of the radio fled us very quickly, and no where,   
no where is there another car to be heard. Even the truck is long   
gone from us now. The sky has even silenced itself, with not a   
single plane flying overhead.   
  
It's eerie and chilling and the fact that I'm surrounded by three   
men who earlier tried to protect me doesn't comfort me much in that   
the way they fought for my honor was to pull out their wallets. Not   
going to work in this damn cliché setting for a psychotic man with a   
hook for a hand to come upon us.   
  
Self-consciously, I slide my elbow nonchalantly up the side of the   
door and push down the lock while I try to look like I'm smoothing   
my hair behind my ear.   
  
Josh is still fighting for his bearings. He was asleep longer than   
any one. He didn't even wake up when we pulled into a brightly lit   
gas station…the last sign of civilization we've seen, shortly after   
our rendition of Silent Night. "Where are we? Is this San Francisco?"  
  
I look out over the deserted seascape, increasingly haunting as   
moonbeams bleed through clouds to pool on certain surfaces while   
others are too dark to be silvered by any light at all.   
  
And I can't help it. "Yes, Josh. This is San Francisco. It was blown   
away in the storm, but we thought you needed your sleep. And so   
we're just stopping here to have a little gander--"  
  
"Okay, so it's not San Francisco. That's all you had to say. A   
simple *no*. So where are we?"  
  
"No one knows," Toby mutters.  
  
"Fredrick knows." I murmur. "But he's probably not going to tell us   
now."  
  
"What does the GPS say?" Josh wonders, sitting up and trying to get   
a look at it around my shoulder.  
  
"Sam turned it off," I say helpfully, then add "hours ago," and Sam   
gives me a most ungrateful look.  
  
"Why the hell would you do that?" Josh shrieks. "And where the hell   
are we? Are we even in California?"  
  
"Of course we are!" Sam assures him and then more quietly   
says, "I'm pretty sure of it..."  
  
"Turn it on! What have you done?" Josh is trying to climb over me   
and Sam to get to the GPS. He is stretching as far as possible and   
he just can't quite get it. Naturally, I don't help him out.  
  
"Look, there was a bad accident on the Interstate. I knew how to get   
to California 1. So here we are. It's south to San Francisco. How   
hard is that? And I hate to tell you, but Frederick can't tell you   
anything about fixing a tire!" Sam's voice is climbing here, and his   
knuckles are going white on the steering wheel…probably because all   
the color in his body seems to be flooding into his face. There's a   
vein in his forehead that's becoming particularly prominent.   
  
Sam takes navigation very seriously.  
  
Josh blinks a few times. "Fredrick?"   
  
"Never mind!" Sam shouts. Then he seems to *realize* he is shouting   
and sits back, loosening his hold on the steering wheel with effort.   
  
"Feel better?" I say soothingly.  
  
"Much," he nods. "Thanks."  
  
"Are we going to get out of the car and have a look at the tire, or   
are we going to have a group therapy session now?" Toby inquires, and it seems to me to   
be a fair question.  
  
I don't really want to open the door, but Josh is behind me and is   
suddenly urging me to let him out –and right *now*. When I hear the   
noises he's making and realize his stomach has just caught up to   
him, I practically bolt from the car, forgetting about my bad toes   
and putting my full weight down upon them.   
  
By the time I realize how badly it hurts, it's too late to remove my   
weight from my right foot. It doesn't stop me from trying, though. I   
stumble and try to hop on my left foot, but I lose my balance. And   
fall flat on the pavement, catching myself with my palms and   
skinning them.  
  
I hear Josh being rather violently sick over the guardrail as I push   
myself up off my stomach and ease down onto my butt on the wet   
pavement, careful not to let the toe of my boot touch the ground for   
fear of any more contact. I am unable to contemplate standing again   
just now, though the water biting through the fabric is so cold that   
it is circling to a burn.   
  
In fact, my toes hurt so bad that I think I may have to join Josh in   
a moment.   
  
I look around me and see little bits of tire tread everywhere in the   
glimmer of headlights, littering a zig-zag of black marks swerving   
from one side of the highway to the other. I'm particularly   
distressed to see just how close some of those marks are to the   
guardrail. The car is sitting on its rim about three feet away from   
my thigh. It's cold as hell, and the wind hasn't let up as much as I   
thought it had from the confines of our car.  
  
"For the love of God!" Toby mutters as he comes around the car and   
gets a look at Josh, then me. "You people are thirteen kinds of   
worthless. What the hell's wrong with you?"   
  
"I fell down," I say, though I consider it rather obvious.  
  
Josh straightens up only so he can turn around and collapse heavily   
against the rail. "I have a sensitive system," he admits, for   
perhaps the first and only time. He presses the heels of both hands   
above his eyes and bends over, taking deep breaths. Weakly, he   
adds, "I'm not a damned cat, by the way. I'm about out of lives   
here."  
  
Sam is in the trunk now. His shoulders have completely vanished   
from sight.  
  
Toby divides a contemptuous look between Josh and me and turns back   
to Sam, who appears to be digging even more deeply into the trunk.   
His feet have almost left the ground at this point, and I wonder   
exactly how large the space could be.  
  
"Now what the hell are you doing?" Toby growls and splays his   
fingers across his head, tapping against the crown with his index   
finger. "I'm surrounded by idiots."  
  
Sam's voice is muffled, but I hear both panic and disbelief in it   
when it drifts out to us. "There's no spare."  
  
"Sure there's a spare," Toby says in a dismissive tone, laced with   
just a little uneasiness. "Did you lift up the compartment in the   
floor there?"  
  
The heels of Sam's feet return to the highway as he starts edging   
backwards. I hear a thump and see the trunk door bounce further   
upwards as presumably Sam cracks his skull open upon it.  
  
Oh God, what a sight we must make. Me sprawled out in a puddle,   
unable to get up and gather my dignity around me because I've   
suffered a massive injury to my big toe. Josh, pale and clammy and   
unable to stand on his weak knees after vomiting into the Pacific.   
Sam, swearing and staggering and holding what will probably be a   
good-sized knot on the back of his head.   
  
I finally make it to my feet---alone mind you---the men so bent on   
protecting my honor earlier have apparently got better things on   
their minds now. I hobble over to the rail very slowly. Josh has   
recovered somewhat, and he, Toby, and Sam are all standing, inches   
apart, staring down into the trunk. They are bathed in the red wash   
of taillights, and it's creeping me out a little bit.  
  
At first, there was a lot of screaming. Then they all began crawling   
around the car, under the car, searching for the spare. Then they   
all stood and stared at the flat—or rather, nonexistent—tire for a   
bit. Finally they have reconvened in front of the open trunk.   
  
They haven't said anything in awhile.  
  
And then Toby voices aloud the observation Sam made fifteen minutes   
ago. "There's no spare."  
  
I sort of tune them out at this point. I gather that Josh is   
shrieking about the rental car company and how he's going to sue   
their asses, and Sam is whole-heartedly agreeing to represent us   
all. Toby is cursing fluently, holding up his cell phone and walking   
back and forth, trying to get some sort of a signal.   
  
I'm trying very hard not to fall over the rail and into the ocean   
below and wondering exactly what kind of damage I've done to my toe.  
  
Josh calls to me over his shoulder. "CJ, are you going to help us   
out here?"  
  
"You're the strategists. You da men. I'm the Press Secretary. You   
come up with a plan and then I'll brief the…" I look around for   
someone to brief. And settle on, "I'll brief Fredrick."  
  
Then I snort softly at my own cleverness. They do not.  
  
I expected to be met with glares, or more likely, stones, but Josh's   
eyes get wide and he smiles. "Claudia Jean, you're a genius. We'll   
turn on the GPS! Maybe it can give us information on how far we are   
from…something."  
  
"Oh yes," I say politely, "excellent," and stay where I am as Josh   
leaps into the car. Sam and Toby come around to stand outside the   
open driver's door.  
  
The night is still and the air is growing heavy with a fog the likes   
of which I have never seen before. The fog is thick enough that it   
seems to insulate me against the pure sea air beyond it.   
  
When the GPS comes on, I can hear it clearly through the open car   
door.   
  
Frederick was apparently either injured in the mayhem, disrupted by   
the storm, or, in my opinion, just really pissed that we turned him   
off, because over and over, no matter what Josh does to it, the   
black box just repeats, "turn around here. Go back."  
  
"Good advice," I say quietly to the Pacific.  
  
*  
  
We, not one of us, gets phone service here. We belong to one of the   
most amazing digital networks in the country…in the world…and   
there's not a phone among ours that works right now. Which explains   
why after more discussion that I thought strictly necessary, we are   
walking down the Pacific Coastal Highway.  
  
Clarification. They are walking. I am struggling, alone, behind   
them, half-hopping, half-limping and I'm sure it's the most   
ungraceful sight in the world. Not that they are paying enough   
attention to appreciate it.   
  
They are men on a mission, on a hunt. For what, I don't know. A   
spare tire is my first guess. I would settle happily for a blanket   
and a bed. And a bone saw with which to amputate my toes.  
  
They seem to not notice that I've dropped back, oh, fifty yards or   
so, and that the distance is growing. And damned if I'm going to ask   
them to slow down.  
  
Because if they discover that I have really injured myself in   
kicking Lumberjack Joe, there will be hell to pay. They will never   
let me forget it. The story of their chivalry, which will be   
exaggerated and expanded upon with every telling, is going to take   
long enough to die without the epilogue of them having to not only   
save me but also carry me home.  
  
God. They are so going to notice that I cannot keep up. I am short   
of breath right now, I'm in so much pain, and I feel sick to my   
stomach. Despite the chill of the air, a sweat is breaking across   
the bridge of my nose and at the nape of my neck.  
  
"CJ, what in God's name is your problem? What are you doing back   
there? We haven't walked half a mile!"   
  
I don't think I'd realized that I'd stopped completely until I hear   
Toby's voice. It bounces off the rocks over my head and is thrown   
out to sea. It sounds as if he's calling from above me, rather than   
from down the very steep hill they've been walking down.   
  
Sam, Josh, and Toby all pushed the car from the middle of the road   
before we left it behind us. The headlights are still on to light   
our way with more consistency than the intermittent moonlight. The   
lights are throwing my outline down the hillside and over them. I'm   
a little self-conscious at just how ridiculously long my legs look   
in the distorted shadow.   
  
Shielding their eyes against the bright lights behind me, they are   
staring at me. "What's going on?" Sam calls.   
  
"Coming," I call breathlessly and then grit my teeth. I can do this.   
I've been in worse pain before and dealt with it. Not that I can   
remember when by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm sure there   
was a time.  
  
They are now coming back up the hill towards me, because they can   
see I'm clearly not coming any time soon. I'm still trying to gather   
my courage to take a step forward. Knowing the kind of sharp agony   
I'm going to feel, as if my bones are about to slice through both   
tissue and skin, doesn't help much.   
  
I'm living up to my Secret Service code name, which I've protested   
to every authority I can think of, standing here on the pavement,   
one foot hovering in the air.   
  
And I'm pretty much still doing my impression of a freaking flamingo   
when they all stop before me, breathless after their climb.  
  
"Something's wrong, isn't it?" Sam asks me.  
  
"I'll tell you. You boys, you're as quick as…I don't even know   
what." I hurt too badly to come up with a simile…even a bad one.   
  
"Well, what's wrong with you?" Josh wonders. "Cramp?"  
  
This sounds like a better explanation than the truth, so I nod, and   
then, to back up my story, place a hand against my side.  
  
"You need to rest a minute?" Sam asks.  
  
"Yeah, just a minute," I say, still breathing heavily, "Just one   
small, short, minute…"   
  
At this point, I make the mistake of meeting Toby's eyes.   
  
Damn the man for seeing right through me. He isn't gracious enough   
to be buying this, even a little bit. I think I say something to him   
with my stare, with my defiantly raised chin, because he blinks and   
then turns to Josh and Sam.  
  
He tells them, "I'm done with the walking. You two go on ahead. We're going to wait   
here. Find some help, why don't you, and come back and get us.   
Preferably soon."  
  
"No, that's stupid. We shouldn't split up. I'm fine now," I say,   
because I still don't want Toby's help. "Let's just go."  
  
They don't go, so I decide to, and put my foot down with   
determination.   
  
A cry escapes through teeth clenched to prevent just that, and my   
knee gives in an instinctive attempt to avoid the pain.   
  
Toby grabs me under one arm and Josh's arm comes around my waist and   
between them, they keep me from hitting the pavement again. I feel   
about four years old, but it hurts so bad that I cannot stop the   
tears from rising up in my eyes. I'm fighting with everything I have   
to keep them from scalding a path down my cheeks right now.  
  
There is still sharp agony pulsing in white-hot flashes as Josh and   
Toby very nearly carry me toward the guardrail. I feel dizzy and   
sick and disoriented.   
  
"What have you done Claudia Jean?" Josh asks softly as soon as I am   
leaning against the wet rail and trying to pretend my vision hasn't   
been almost completely obscured by my tears. This is so not me. This   
is so not happening.  
  
"Apparently, she's done some damage to her foot," Sam says wisely,   
and I grudgingly nod. "Apparently she really did kick the hell out   
of that guy."  
  
"Don't say anything!" I say angrily to Toby, although he hasn't, and   
dash at the tears with my sleeve. The worst of the pain has passed   
and now my toes all just throb meanly with every heartbeat. For   
maybe the first time I realize how much pressure there is against my   
shoes and wonder how much swelling there must be. Until I tried to   
walk on my foot, the support felt good. Now, I want to rip my boot,   
and possibly my foot, off immediately.  
  
"Why the hell didn't you say anything earlier?" Toby shouts.  
  
"It didn't hurt that bad earlier. It was kind of numb for a few   
hours. I wasn't walking on it! Now it hurts!" I snap. "Happy?"  
  
"No," Toby says softly, and I know he is distressed that I'm   
hurting.   
  
He suggests that Josh and Sam go look for some form of help. We   
think, after peering further over the edge of the railing than was   
probably wise, that there are lights down below, near the beach.   
It's an incredibly steep walk, and probably a two mile-long one, so   
I really don't think that I'm going to protest.  
  
Josh tries to send Sam without him, citing all of this as Sam's   
fault for turning off the GPS. Sam counters that this whole trip is   
Josh's idea and that he should be the one to go.  
  
They both stare dubiously down the long, dark road, and I think   
they've seen the same movies featuring man-with-hook-hand that I   
have.   
  
"You could flip for it," Toby suggests casually.   
  
Apparently, neither feels as if luck is with him, because in the end   
they refuse to chance being the one sent alone, and both go. Sam and   
Josh move away at a jog, their footsteps bouncing up off the cliff   
side and returning to us in distorted echoes. I think normally Josh   
would have protested moving any faster than his signature swagger,   
but he's afraid of being left too far behind.  
  
When the sound fades away and that strange, tangible silence wraps   
around us again, I begin speaking just to break free of it. "So what   
gave me away?"  
  
Toby rolls his eyes. "You mean how did I see through the story that   
someone who runs four miles a day on a treadmill was on the verge of   
collapse after a half a mile walk? I'm just quick, I guess."  
  
"Yeah, that's you. Quick as…" I try again, but come up with   
nothing. "I just don't know what works there."  
  
He's not paying attention to my words, because he's preoccupied with   
my comfort. "It's cold. Think you could make it back up to the car?   
We could sit there and wait."   
  
I look up the hill, daunted by the severe angle of it. The   
headlights from the car perched there stream over our heads, two   
cylinders of brightness reaching far, far down the hill, and to the   
frothy ocean beyond the curve that takes the road out of sight.   
  
Toby sighs and says, "probably not a good idea, huh? Have you broken   
anything?"  
  
"I think so," I say, because this is clearly no time to be a hero,   
in that I have already given myself away as a simpering wuss. "A   
toe. Maybe two toes. Maybe all of them. I can't tell."  
  
"Think we should look at it now?" he wonders and sounds like he's   
afraid I'll say yes.  
  
"No…let's not. It, it doesn't hurt very bad right now, and I don't   
want to mess with it."  
  
"You should have said something earlier, CJ. We could have gotten   
you to a doctor or something. We could have at least given you an   
Advil. Some ice."  
  
"Toby, honest to God, if I'd have known how bad it was going to hurt   
a few hours later, I would have screamed from the rooftops that I'd   
hurt myself. I wasn't being noble."  
  
"Here, you should elevate it." He shrugs out of his long overcoat   
and he folds it over once and tosses it to the ground. "Sit there."   
He takes me by the elbow and I hold onto the rail with the other   
hand as I ease down onto the coat, one long leg outstretched to keep   
the foot from touching anything. My muscles are starting to quiver   
with the effort.  
  
"What am I supposed to elevate it on?" I ask him, but before I   
finish speaking, he's released my arm and he's come around to sit in   
front of me, on the pavement, and he's very, very carefully taking   
me by the calf and easing my foot into his lap, holding me steady by   
the ankle.  
  
The pressure of his fingers on my ankle is somehow soothing. I might   
have flinched to have someone so near to my very sore foot, but I   
trust Toby not to hurt it, accidentally or otherwise.  
  
We sit like that for several minutes. Josh and Sam's footsteps and   
voices have completely left us, and it feels like we might be alone   
in the world. I look down the hill where our shadow has overtaken   
the landscape.   
  
It could be a tender scene. Toby cradling my injured foot. Except   
that my heart is beating too fast because I'm caught between wishing   
Toby will say something and hoping that he won't.   
  
I wonder why we are still awkward with one another alone. We do fine   
when Sam and Josh are around, but we still haven't hit our stride   
together again.   
  
He knows that too.   
  
I guess he figures we've got nothing else better to do right now   
than to try to get back on equal footing. I can't tell him to shove   
it up his ass and walk away like I did during the whole Qumar thing.  
  
"You had a nightmare, awhile ago. In the car," Toby begins, without   
preamble, looking down at my boot. His hands still hold my ankle   
immobile, so when I start a little in surprise, my toes are safe.  
  
"I thought you were asleep."  
  
"I was, off and on. I was awake when you woke up startled. You   
started to tell Sam what you'd just dreamed, but you changed your   
mind."  
  
"It wasn't important," I shrug, wondering where he's going. "Just a   
strange dream."  
  
"It made me remember something that I haven't thought about in   
almost twenty years."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"You went to the Middle East the summer between your Junior and   
Senior year of college. With a relief effort of some kind."  
  
"Yeah. The Red Cross."   
  
"I'd just met you the Spring before. When I started dating your   
roommate."  
  
"I know all this Toby. I was there too." My tone is suddenly sharp,   
because I'm afraid of where he's going with this. I'm afraid that   
he's about to figure it all out.   
  
And when I glance at the wedding band that still glitters on his   
finger, I feel a familiar pull of something I don't even want to try   
to recognize.   
  
And I wonder what Andi told him and feel betrayed already, before I   
hear it.  
  
"I always figured you went to Afghanistan or Egypt or somewhere along   
those lines. It was Qumar, wasn't it? You went there."  
  
I'm still startled and starting to feel trapped, but I swallow hard   
and say, "Yeah. I went to Qumar."   
  
"What'd you do over there?" He asks casually, but I suspect he knows   
exactly what we did over there.  
  
"We tried to allay some of the suffering there, Toby. We had to do   
it underground, quietly. We tried to help them. I got in my head to   
try and begin some sort of change there, through the women   
themselves. I talked to them when we brought them food, tried to   
explain to them that it was within their rights to live outside of   
fear. I took some video footage so the outside world could see what   
these women are put through."  
  
"How'd it go?"  
  
"Well, we were caught and imprisoned for three days by the police   
and all of my footage was destroyed and all of the food and other   
aid we'd brought was confiscated. We were sent home, and lucky that   
we were allowed to leave at all."  
  
"So it didn't go well."  
  
"No, it didn't go well." My jaw is starting to ache with the force   
of the teeth I am clamping between every word.  
  
"So you came back to school the next fall."  
  
"Yeah," I say, impatient with his step-by-step approach. I don't   
like to talk about this at all, and particularly not right now, and   
certainly not with Toby. "Look, Toby, I don't know what you're   
getting at, but I don't think—"  
  
He interrupts me. "Andi told me that after you came back that you'd   
wake up startled or that you'd call out in your sleep. She said that   
you'd try to hide it, and that you never said anything about it.   
But she'd hear you sometimes, crying at night. She said that for   
about six months, she didn't think that you slept through the night   
once."  
  
"I didn't realize I was disturbing her."  
  
"No…CJ, you weren't…that isn't the point. She just, she saw the   
difference in you after you returned. You know something else?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"I noticed it too. When I visited that semester. I noticed it too."  
  
"Noticed what?"  
  
"I don't even know if I could explain it. When I first met you…" he   
smiles and chuckles softly to himself, looking down the hill at our   
shadows, and shaking his head. "You were in the process of setting   
the world on its ear, CJ. You were so…I don't even know…you were   
just on *fire*. You walked into a room and you owned it and you   
didn't care who knew it. And you'd burn anyone who   
disagreed with you. Including me, several times that year."  
  
I remember several heated debates across mine and Andi's dorm room   
and smile back at him for a moment. "Andrea would get so tired of   
it, wouldn't she? She'd eventually leave us to go find a quiet place   
in the lounge to study."   
  
"It didn't stop us," he reminds me with the smile he reserves for   
when he's feeling fondly toward me. "Nothing did. Not Andi, not   
curfews, not graduation, not a thousand miles. Not a couple of   
decades." The smile drops out of his lips then and he sighs   
heavily. "Except for that trip. CJ, when you got back, you weren't   
the same."  
  
"Can you even begin to imagine the things I saw there, Toby? Of   
course, I wasn't the same! And what would it say about me if I were!"  
  
Toby shook his head. "I'm not trying to say…Look, CJ, I know what   
you saw would have affected you…but CJ, I can't help thinking, and   
Andi couldn't help but thinking that something else happened there.   
Something that rocked you more deeply than the suffering you saw.   
And I don't know what it was."  
  
"Toby, all that was a very long time ago, and it has nothing to do   
with what's going on now."  
  
"I think it has everything to do with what's going on now. You moved   
through it back then, CJ. You moved through it and you got most, if   
not all , of your fire back. The day when I told you to announce the   
arms package sale to Qumar, you were so much like the girl I first   
met that it threw me a little. I'd almost forgotten how formidable   
you could be. But since the announcement CJ, you're the roommate   
fresh back from there."   
  
"Toby, you're talking like a lunatic. You know that don't you?" I   
try to say lightly, but as with any other time I try to blow Toby   
off, my voice, my eyes, my heart, betray me.  
  
"I feel like I did that to you, CJ. I feel like I took the same   
thing from you that you lost in Qumar. What was it? You need to let me in here."   
  
I'm stunned into silence, because he shouldn't be allowed to lay me   
open like this without my permission.  
  
"CJ, are you going to tell me about what happened or not?"  
  
My heart is thundering again, making my toes throb with renewed   
meanness. It has been so very long since I've let myself revisit   
this place that Toby's dragged me to. Because it came as such a   
surprise that he remembers I went over there at all, and that I came   
back changed, and that he and Andi both knew that I didn't sleep   
well for half a year. I haven't had time to construct a logical   
defense.  
  
So I take an illogical one, jerking my foot from his grasp and   
pushing myself off his coat and back onto the guardrail. Putting   
space between us in the hopes that he won't be able to see me so   
clearly from a distance.  
  
"You're the last person in the world that I'll ever tell about   
Qumar, Toby. Leave me the hell alone and don't ever ask me about it   
again."  
  
My words wound him, and that wounds me, and when we see triumphant   
headlights peeking in and out of the curves below us—coming up to   
get us, I hope—we still haven't said another word to one another.  
  
In a few minutes, Josh and Sam spill out of an old Lincoln, followed   
more slowly by a man in his late sixties, clothed in a bathrobe and   
overcoat.  
  
"Toby, CJ, this is Ernie. Ernie owns a hotel at the bottom of the   
hill. He's going to take us in for the night."  
  
"Excellent," I say, hoping that Sam and Josh won't notice the   
tension between Toby and I. I turn to the older man and smile. "Nice   
to meet you Ernie. You're my hero."  
  
Ernie grins, but I get the feeling Ernie doesn't say much.  
  
"How's your foot?" Josh asks, and comes forward when I grimace in   
answer. "Let's get you in the car. You both look cold."  
  
He and Sam both come forward, urging me to throw and arm around   
their shoulders. As I do so, I notice Toby standing awkwardly to the   
side, not sure of what to do.   
  
He wants to help now, was only trying to help a minute ago. I feel   
regret tightening my throat. I don't like to hurt Toby. There's   
always something sad in his eyes, and I can't stand to see anything   
I've said darken them any further. I have an ability to do just that   
to him sometimes though, and it seems as if I've done so again now.  
  
Josh and Sam put me in the back seat of the car so I can stretch my   
foot out. Sam slides in on the other side and urges me to prop the   
foot upon his lap, and I do, but I don't quite trust him as much as   
I did Toby. Josh slides across the bench seat in the front of the   
car, leaving Toby to sit on the front passenger side, in front of me.  
  
We don't say very much as Ernie drives back up the hill so that Toby   
can run gather our things and turn off the headlights of the car. I   
assume that we're going to worry about the flat in the morning,   
which is fine with me.  
  
I watch the way his eyes are downcast as he crosses back in front of   
the Lincoln's headlights. He's sorry. He's sorry my foot hurts, he's   
sorry about Qumar, and he's sorry that he asked me about it.  
  
And I have to remind myself that what happened in Qumar is not his   
fault.   
  
It's completely mine.  
  
And so, when Ernie turns the car around and starts back down the   
hill, I quietly reach my hand between the door and the seat, and   
give Toby's shoulder a very light squeeze. He stiffens, but in a   
moment, his hand comes to cover mine, and I know he accepts my   
apology.  



	5. Voices Down the Corridor

Chapter Five: Voices Down the Corridor  
  
  
Toby opens my car door and helps me out when we roll to a stop in   
front of a very large manor house that's a black, hulking mass   
against the navy night. It is perched precariously on the edge of a   
cliff, so that there's nothing but empty sky behind it. Clouds are   
again boiling up on the horizon and cool purple brilliance shimmers   
across them as lightning returns.  
  
In a moment, the front door creaks open reluctantly, and a rectangle   
of yellow light pours onto the ground before it. I see no one there   
who might have opened it and my skin ripples with chills.  
  
"This place looks like the Hotel California," I observe aloud to no   
one in particular.  
  
Sam, who has come around the car to see if he can help Toby get me   
inside, mutters in response, "I was thinking the Bates Motel."  
  
I glare at him, not appreciating the thought at all but thinking he   
may have it right. Shivering, I say, "I like mine better."  
  
"Would you shut up now?" Toby mutters and I see that Ernie is coming   
around the car. I check just to be doubly sure that Ernie has no   
hook for a hand. Ernie smiles at us and opens the trunk, swinging   
two carry-on bags across his shoulder while Josh grabs the other   
two.   
  
I think that I could care less if Ernie is a murderer this moment,   
because my foot has gotten progressively worse, and even with almost   
all my weight supported between Sam and Toby, I'm in a lot of pain.   
  
I try to focus on other things as we make our halting way into the   
house. The few lamps I see don't push the shadows all the way back   
into the corners. The house smells old and musty, and most of the   
furniture in the den we pass through is covered in plastic. It looks   
as if this was once a grand place.   
  
Long, long ago.   
  
A white cat with eyes so pale they nearly match its fur sits on the   
stairway, head thrust through the railing. It's nearly eye-level   
with me as I hobble by, and it stares me down as I move past it. I   
find that I don't want to turn my back on the cat.  
  
Ernie leads us into a large dining room. There are probably ten   
tables for four, with all the chairs hanging upside-down from the   
tabletops. Ernie hastens to pull the chairs off one table, and   
motions me into the first one.  
  
I collapse into it gratefully and don't protest when Toby lifts my   
foot and eases it onto another chair.  
  
"Good evening, poor dears." A voice that doesn't belong to Ernie and   
that doesn't belong to us floats into the room on a draft that   
chills the back of my neck. The sound is pitched high and airy, yet   
it seems to fill the room to the rafters.  
  
A moment later a tall woman with hair as white as lightning comes   
in. She is probably in her seventies or eighties, but she moves with   
the easy grace of an eighteen-year-old. She's wearing a silk dinner   
dress, her hair pulled neatly off her neck in a bun, her lips   
reddened, eyelashes lengthened.  
  
I know she's had time to prepare for us since Josh and Sam first   
arrived but I'm unnerved because it's almost like she was expecting   
us all along.  
  
"You are most welcome," she says directly to me with a smile. "We're   
so glad you've stopped by. My name is Rose. This is my son, Ernie."  
  
"It's good to be here," Sam smiles, sitting down heavily across the   
table from me.   
  
"Yes, you're kind to take us in so late at night," I say, hoping to   
get on their good side. I look at quiet Ernie and his mother and   
think of Psycho, and damn Sam for bringing up the Bates Motel in the   
first place.  
  
"Not at all," Rose says in her strangely lyrical but empty   
voice. "It's so unusual for us to have guests in the off season. How   
about some coffee to warm you up. Perhaps a drink? Brandy? Wine?"  
  
"Do you happen to have any aspirin? My friend here thinks she's   
broken her toes, and we're going to need to have a look soon," Toby   
murmurs and I wince, wishing he'd forget about the looking at my   
toes part.  
  
"My dear Claudia Jean," Rose says and I leap upright in my chair so   
quickly that my boot slips off the other one and my heel comes   
crashing to the floor. Blue lights of pain explode in front of my   
eyes, and with effort, I don't throw up.  
  
"How did you know my name?" I gasp.  
  
"We do get CNN out here," Rose says and laughs at my terror. I   
suspect she knows every thought that has run through my head since I   
got here. "I'll bring an aspirin to you, my dear. It's a pleasure   
to have you all here. I voted for President Bartlet, you know."  
  
"Oh, well, um..thanks?" I say, because the boys don't look   
interested in conversation.  
  
"Yes, of course. I'll just go fetch the aspirin."  
  
"If I could just maybe get a glass of wine? I don't want an aspirin."  
  
Josh and Sam ask for coffee, Toby requests Brandy and a pair of good   
scissors.   
  
Rose tugs Ernie along behind her and in a moment we are alone in the   
dining room. So Ernie is Rose's son…that would make her closer to   
ninety, I guess.  
  
"Why won't you take anything?" Josh wonders.   
  
"I don't like to take drugs for just every little thing. You get   
immune and you know, stuff."  
  
"So you're drinking wine instead. Because there's not really a   
chance you get immune by drinking too much of it for just every   
little thing," Sam reasons.  
  
  
I start to reply but Toby stands up and moves closer to my foot,   
which I've returned gingerly to the chair. "How do these shoes come   
off?" he wonders, leaning over my foot and looking on both sides of   
the boot.  
  
"Well, Toby, I wrinkle my nose and cross my arms and nod my head and   
poof! Want to see?"  
  
"CJ," he snaps, draws a deep breath, and takes the high road. "Is   
there a zipper or something? Or do you just pull them off?"  
  
"I don't like the way a zipper looks on a pair of shoes. Shoes   
aren't supposed to have zippers," I assert.  
  
"So, no. You just pull it on and off, then."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"That's what I thought. CJ, I want you to prepare yourself for this.   
We're going to have to cut the shoe off your foot."  
  
"Like Hell you are," I say without missing a beat, glaring at Toby   
with my best, I'm-so- serious-that-I-may-kill-you-just-for-  
suggesting-it look.  
  
"CJ, the shoe has to come off," Sam agrees, coming to Toby's   
aid...at least in spirit. He's standing a good distance from me.  
  
"Over my dead, rotting body." Perhaps I'm not being reasonable here.   
Perhaps I don't give a damn. "It isn't so bad. Let's just pull it   
off. Come on, it'll be fine."  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, CJ. It's a pair of shoes."  
  
I gasp indignantly. "You may have on just a pair of shoes, Tobias.   
But let me tell you a little story about CJ Cregg. These shoes are   
Cole Haan's. They are Italian, tumbled grain calfskin leather. In   
Camel. The last pair in Washington, D.C. Leather   
lining, sock cushioning. I looked for them for three weeks. Tried on   
every pair of boots in every department store there is. These fit me   
like no other."  
  
Toby nods. "That's all very nice, and somewhere, far, far away, I'm   
sure there's someone who cares. We're still going to have to cut the   
shoe."  
  
"I paid $300 for these boots!" I nearly shout and my voice threads   
down the hallway and comes back in a panicked echo.  
  
"You're the biggest moron I've ever come across," Toby replies.  
  
"We are not cutting these boots off. No way. Josh, come here. I want   
you to pull it off."  
  
"I told you. I'm running out of lives, CJ," Josh says, backing away   
from me. I've lost some of my power over Josh now that he knows I   
can't give chase.  
  
I try a different tactic with Sam. Pleading. The damsel in   
distress. "Sam, please. I'm asking you to help me out here. Just   
slide it right off. I love these shoes. It would break my heart to   
ruin them."   
  
Sam seems to be pondering it. Sam is no stranger to good clothes.   
Sucker. He gives Toby an uncertain glance, and in return, Toby   
glares down at me, cheek dipping in and out. I hear his teeth   
grinding together.  
  
Finally, he throws up his hands and motions Sam over. "Go ahead.   
Pull it off. Pull her whole damned foot off if you want to. Then you   
know what we're going to call you, CJ?"  
  
"I do not," I say.  
  
"Peg Leg Cregg."   
  
He isn't able to say it with an entirely straight face, and Sam and   
Josh both give off startled barks of laughter. I have to admit that   
even I crack a smile.  
  
Sam approaches and I lean back in the chair and grasp the back legs   
of it to keep my hands at my side and clamp my teeth tightly. He   
hesitates, one hand closed around the heel of the boot, the other at   
the back of my ankle.  
  
"You sure?" he says.  
  
"Do it quickly," I advise, and clench my teeth again. "Don' worry   
about hurting me. I'm tough."  
  
He yanks.   
  
I scream.  
  
And scream. And scream. Loudly. Which causes him to cry out and jump   
back, releasing my foot, which for the second time, slips from the   
chair and bounces off the hardwood floor of the dining room.  
  
I double over in the chair, tears streaming down my face. I'm   
furious.   
  
"You twisted bastard!" I accuse Sam through my tears, and see that   
he looks near to them himself. "You sick, sadistic f--."  
  
"Um, CJ," Josh interrupts me.   
  
"But you said…you told me to do it quickly." Sam defends himself  
  
"And what the Hell made you think you'd be able to pull off my boot   
at all? I have broken bones, Sam! Broken bones!"  
  
"You're an idiot," Toby growls and I look over to him to thank him   
for his support in berating Sam, and then realize that he's talking   
to me.  
  
*  
  
"Well, it's really quite obvious," I sigh a few moments after Rose   
and Ernie's return and after I down a glass of wine in three   
swallows and gratefully accept a refill. "We're going to have to cut   
it off."  
  
"You think?" Josh mutters sarcastically.  
  
"Hey Ernie, how about those scissors?" Toby asks with a smile that   
has me thinking maybe Sam's not the sadistic one at all.  
  
"Oh, dear, we forgot the scissors. Ernie, go get the scissors," Rose   
instructs her son and flits around me like a nervous bird as Ernie   
leaves the room. She begins prattling on about the grand old days   
when movie stars stayed at her hotel in the summer and how this is   
nearly as big a deal.   
  
"Ernie's father was a movie star," she says dreamily as she pats her   
hair and I feel a little pang of sorrow for her, living here alone,   
dressed for dinner, and still probably looking for a man who used   
her once when she was too young to know better and never looked back   
again.  
  
"Ernie sure is quiet," Sam murmurs.  
  
"Ernie's mute," Rose says, and looks at Sam like he'd have to be a   
simpleton to miss it.  
  
I am startled and I look to Sam who's staring back at me. How odd   
that we were discussing if we'd rather be deaf or mute earlier in   
the evening. This night gets more and more bizarre.  
  
Especially when Ernie returns with some deadly looking gardening   
tool. Not so much scissors as shears and I think that he's probably   
going to kills us with them. I'm a little relieved when Toby takes   
them with authority.   
  
He's going to enjoy this, I know.   
  
I can't look. It's a little like getting a shot at the hospital and   
thinking that if you don't watch the needle go in, it will somehow   
hurt less.  
  
I hear the soft groaning protest of the leather as it splits against   
the blades. I wince although I know without doubt that Toby is not   
going to let the shears anywhere near my skin. I think I would   
rather have him lay me open to the bone than to have to let him cut   
these boots. These beautiful, expensive, comfortable, warm boots   
that were so damn hard to find.   
  
Inch by inch, I feel a release of pressure against my calf, down to   
my ankle. There is, for a moment, increased tension against my toes   
and then the leather pulls away across the top of my foot and in a   
moment, Toby lifts the boot straight up off my toes and I hear   
the "thump" as it hits the floor.  
  
"Time of Death..." Josh begins, but stops abruptly when I turn my   
glare onto him.  
  
Toby is now pulling at my sock, cutting that away too. The socks did   
not cost $300, so I watch him do this. When he gets to the top of my   
foot, the dark brown cotton falls away from skin that is not the   
pale, winter color of my ankle but rather a dark, angry black   
already. The colors mutate as he gets closer to my toes, which are   
bulging inside of the shredded sock, obviously several times their   
normal size. Black, furious red, yellowish green, and finally deep,   
royal purple. My first two toes are grotesquely swollen, bent rather   
sickeningly in ways they shouldn't be.   
  
Behind me, Sam hisses in sympathy as Toby drops the sock beside the   
boot, which I still haven't been able to bring myself to look at.  
  
"Damn, CJ," Josh murmurs. "I bet that hurts."  
  
"I bet you're right," I say quietly and look at Toby, whose worry   
is evident on his face.  
  
He turns to Ernie. "Do you maybe have a first aid kit? Some gauze,   
something we could splint these toes with? And she'll take that   
aspirin now. Maybe Advil if you have it. She's on her third glass of   
wine."  
  
I'm glad Toby asked for the painkiller, because I wouldn't have. But   
somehow seeing my toes has made them hurt about ten times worse. I'm   
reminded of when I was little. I could have been dropped off the   
roof of our house, and I wouldn't have shed one tear if there was no   
blood. But let a cat scratch me, and I would howl for hours.  
  
He sits down heavily beside me as Ernie leaves the room again. Sam   
puts another glass of wine in my hand, and I take full-mouthed   
swallows, letting the wine roll under my tongue and up against my   
cheeks, trying to take pleasure from it and to distract myself with   
the drinking of it.   
  
Ernie returns once again in his ghost-like fashion, and I numbly   
swallow two Advil tablets with my white wine. The wine seems to be   
dulling everything but the throbbing of my toes. My head is starting   
to fall back, too heavy for my neck and my hands are now hanging   
open at the sides of the chair. Swallowing takes a grand effort and   
my eyes burn with weariness.  
  
From a great, great distance I hear Toby say, "I'm going to try to   
splint your toes, now, CJ. This may hurt a little."  
  
"I'm sure it will," I say, then whisper, "I'm so cold." And I am. My   
teeth are chattering just a little bit, because I'm too weary to try   
and stop them.   
  
I hear Rose's voice, and strangely, it sounds as if she's standing   
right beside me, although I know she's positioned primly at the   
other side of the table. "Ernie, a blanket. And why don't you   
prepare her room for her? Build a fire."  
  
"Her clothes are wet. We might want to find her a change of clothes   
and put those in the dryer," Sam suggests.  
  
"This sweater is dry clean only," I murmur, or at least I think I   
do. I may or may not have said the words aloud. They continue as if   
I hadn't spoken, so I think maybe I just thought I said something.   
  
Toby instructs Josh to look in my carry-on for a change of clothes.   
I hear Josh's soft snort of amusement a few moments later and hear   
Sam ask what's funny.  
  
"The only thing she has in her carry-on is—wait for it—more   
underwear and a pair of heels."  
  
"I don't…you've got to be kidding me," Toby sighs, and although my   
eyes are closed and my head tilted so far back on my neck that it's   
becoming difficult to breathe, I can picture him shaking his   
head. "Look in my bag. I've got a sweatshirt, I think. She can sleep   
in that."  
  
Josh asks for a phone and calls Leo. From Josh's end of the   
conversation, I can tell that Leo thought the check-in was long   
overdue. "I'm sorry to wake you…no, we didn't get any service. We   
had a flat tire on the coast…Sam is why we're on the coast. Well,   
no, we're fine…except that CJ's broken two toes. Well, trust me when   
I say that you don't want to know how. It's a long, long story.   
Yeah, we'll find a tire tomorrow or call the rental car company or   
something. We'll be in San Francisco by lunch time. Is he feeling   
better? Good." Josh voice fills the quiet room as Toby works, and I   
gather by the time he hangs up that we still have our jobs, if for   
no other reason than so Leo can make us regret this whole night even   
more.  
  
As if that were possible.   
  
I think there are tears seeping from under my closed lashes by the   
time Toby's finished with my toes. He was as careful as possible,   
and when he couldn't be gentle, I felt the apology in his hesitation   
and in easy touches at my ankle with fingers callused by hours   
holding pens and stroking keyboards.   
  
"Okay, that'll do until we can get her to a real doctor," he says. I   
realize that at some point a blanket was dropped around my shoulders   
and that I'm not shivering anymore. I'm walking the edge of sleep,   
where every sound blends itself between dreams and wakefulness.  
  
"Ernie, take Miss Cregg to her room, please. Mr. Ziegler, if you'd   
like to carry her things perhaps?" It's that high clear voice that   
doesn't go at all with the willowy body it lives in. "I'll follow   
and help her change into something dry."  
  
I nearly fall back into consciousness as I am suddenly lifted from   
the chair, more effortlessly than I thought I could have ever been   
lifted. I don't open my eyes, but I think it's Ernie, and then   
realize that I know it's Ernie, because the men I'm currently   
travelling with aren't accustomed to carrying anything heavier than   
a pen.   
  
My inhibitions are far enough gone where I don't really mind being   
toted around, and I honestly don't think I could walk—or rather limp—  
to my room, assisted or not.  
  
I open my eyes at one point, and I am started to see Silent Ernie   
staring back at me, smiling softly. I look over his shoulder and   
notice the strange white cat following at a distance, staring at me.   
Toby, Josh and Sam are walking ahead, and beyond them Rose leads us   
slowly through the hallways.  
  
We climb stairs that creak ominously, and I notice what's strange. I   
see no lights. The hall is aglow with soft yellow light,   
illuminating the faces of the strangers imprisoned in gilt frames to   
either side of me. But I cannot see one light fixture. It's as if   
the light is being thrown from the walls themselves.  
  
I blink and try to clear my vision, but the same dreamy, blurred   
surroundings meet my tired eyes upon reexamination.  
  
Rose shows Josh and Sam where they will be staying and leaves them   
there, finally coming to a halt in front of a large door. Shadows   
flicker out into the hallway when the room is opened and I look   
around in amazement as I'm carried in. It's probably larger than my   
entire apartment. The bed is canopied, with dark, dark red velvet   
drapes tied back to reveal heavy quilts turned down to white linens.   
There is a red blaze in the fireplace, throwing angry, angled   
shadows onto all the walls. Above our heads is a grand chandelier,   
and although there is no electricity in the room, the crystal   
absorbs the firelight and throws it back at us in a million facets.  
  
When Ernie sits me on the bed gently, I feel like I could sink   
forever into it.  
  
"Ernie, you can leave us. Mr. Ziegler, perhaps you'll step outside   
while I help Miss Cregg change?"  
  
I hear the door click closed a few minutes later. My eyes are   
growing heavy again, the low light lulling my lashes further and   
further down, until the room is just a narrow slit of dark orange   
light.  
  
I am as listless as a young child dragged out of bed by a mother   
trying to get her ready for school. I feel not the first whisper of   
hands upon me as my damp sweater is pulled over my head, but   
suddenly the cool air of the room assaults me, raising chills for   
only a moment before the soft comfort of an oversized sweatshirt   
covers me.   
  
"Now, Dear," Rose croons, "You are going to need to help me get   
those jeans off."  
  
I do, my cold, clumsy fingers fumbling with the button and zipper.   
Rose then helps me guide the legs of the pants over my foot and   
manages to keep the material or anything else from coming into   
contact with my toes, which are splinted with broken pencils and   
swathed in gauze.   
  
I still don't feel her touch me once, and yet I don't know why,   
because she is right here with me.  
  
She helps me under the covers, lifting the heavy quilts and then the   
sheet from my foot as I cry out with the pain the weight of it   
causes my toes. She tucks the blankets securely around my shoulders   
and good foot and leaves just one corner turned back.  
  
"Sleep well."  
  
I don't hear her leave. The dim slit of firelight that is the room   
disappears completely as I fall hard over the edge into sleep.  
  
*  
  
I am in a place devoid of any light at all. The blackness seems to   
seep in through my pores and I ache everywhere. My mind is   
struggling to wrap around some form of thought, to find an anchor to   
keep me from drifting endlessly across the darkness.  
  
A slow sort of consciousness of something outside of the nothingness   
dawns upon me. Sound. Voices. Voices pleading, voices crying out in   
desperation, in terror, in pain. Voices of a different language than   
my own, but I understand them. I understand not the words but the   
meaning, and I am completely undone by my knowledge.  
  
"CJ. Wake up. It's all right."  
  
My eyes fly open and I jerk upright, and nearly embed my nose into   
Toby's forehead. He's perched on the side of my bed, one arm to   
either side of me as he leans down, speaking in a soft voice. I look   
around and am further confused by the surroundings I recognize only   
vaguely from when I was carried into the room.  
  
"What are you doing here?" I croak out, voice roughened by both   
sleep and the wine I had earlier.  
  
"I don't know…I thought you might be startled if you woke up in the   
middle of the night here. You were pretty much knocked out when   
Ernie brought you in here."  
  
"So you've been here the whole time?" I wonder. "Did I cry out?"  
  
He reaches a hand out, sweeps a thumb under my cheek and then holds   
it up for my inspection. The firelight glistens off the teardrop as   
it slides down toward the heel of his hand. I reach up to touch my   
cheeks myself, and my own fingers come away damp.  
  
"No, you didn't cry out. Not out loud, at least," he says. "I was on   
the sofa over there. You were restless. I didn't realize for a while   
that you were crying. But I wanted to shake you out of wherever it   
was you'd gone to."  
  
I flinch at the mention of where I'd gone to, remembering all too   
well that dark, dark place.  
  
"CJ…has this been happening much recently?"  
  
"Has what been happening much?"  
  
"The dreams. The waking up."  
  
"No," I lie and know that he sees that I'm not telling the truth.   
The truth is that the longest stretch of sleep I've had without   
disturbing dreams since the arms deal with Qumar was in the car   
tonight.  
  
He sighs impatiently, and decides not to call my bluff directly.   
Instead, he murmurs, "don't you think it might help if you talked to   
me about whatever it is going on with you?"  
  
I feel tears coming up again, and deny both them and Toby as I shake   
my head hard. Despite myself, I feel one escape from the corner of   
my eye and it tickles down my cheekbone and into my ear. I stare   
past Toby to the canopy above me.  
  
"CJ, I have to ask you again. What happened in Qumar?" Toby   
whispers, and he reaches up to touch my cheek briefly, steering my   
eyes towards his. In the dying fire, his eyes are pools of blackness   
and I can't read anything in them.  
  
The truth comes surging forth, then ebbs. The truth that I've held   
in for so long that I soon realize I don't have the words. My vocal   
chords ache with it, but my lips just can't move around the memory   
that's voice has for too long been a language I can't speak.  
  
More tears are coming and I'm furious at him for it, and I try to   
turn away but heat stabs through my toes up my shin bone, and Toby   
puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers, "okay, I'm sorry. You don't   
need to talk about it tonight. You need to rest."  
  
It's a reprieve, though a temporary one, and I'm stilled by it more   
than his hands.  
  
"Do you want me to go?" he wonders, removing his hands from me and   
folding them in his lap.  
  
I shake my head because my own silence is choking me. He can't hear   
the voices I hear, but I am suddenly afraid to be alone in the   
darkness with them again. When he moves to return to his sofa, I   
reach a hand out, and my fingers wrap around his wrist.  
  
He understands, or I think he does, and he comes around the other   
side of the bed, easing himself down upon it. There is an expanse of   
white sheet and red quilt between us, but I can feel his warmth   
there, and the comfort of his weight nearby. I am aware of my bare   
legs beneath the sheet. I am aware of my heart…and, as a result, of   
my toes…throbbing with left over unease from my dream and from the   
confrontation with him afterwards. I am aware that beside me, Toby   
is barely breathing.   
  
I reach out and touch his arm briefly before snatching my hand back   
to my side of the bed, and I am also aware that he is the anchor   
I've found in the darkness.  
  



	6. Her Mind is Tiffany Twisted

Chapter Six: Her Mind Is Tiffany Twisted

I wake up and wonder three things. First, who sand-papered my eyeballs. Second, how and why someone has crawled into my head and started swinging at my forehead with a ball peen hammer. Third, why it's only about 20 degrees in this room.

The night before comes back to me in a succession of thoughts that flash rapidly across my mind like lightning, making a momentary mark in my consciousness before fleeing. Waffle House. Thunderstorms. Silent Night. Headlights. Flats. Broken Toes. Garden Shears. Wine. Advil. 

And this strange red room. A nightmare. 

And Toby. 

Another nightmare.

And Toby.

Toby easing his hand across the sheets toward me, a reassuring squeeze against my upper arm. In a moment, his fingers had loosened but remained, with all the weight of a comforting friend.

And now it's dawn, or I think it is, because I can see a square of lighter gray outlining the heavily draped window. Toby is still here with me, and he's moved closer. I imagine it's the cold that's driven him toward me, his guard dropped in dreaming. His arm is a dead weight across my stomach, one knee nudging my bare one under the covers. I can feel the warmth of his breath against my neck in an even rhythm. 

I am not prepared for this kind of intimacy.

"Oh my God," I whisper, mortified. Unable to believe that Toby is here. It had been so easy to reach out for him last night. In the darkness. Morning is going to color everything so much differently. In daylight, I don't think I'm ready to face the staggering weakness I have shown. 

I ease my wrist across my throbbing forehead, and try not to breathe, not to disturb him. Eventually he's going to wake up, and he's going to look at me, and I don't know what is going to be in his eyes. 

What in the hell am I going to say to him? What is he going to say to me? We are going to have to address this, obviously. There isn't a chance he's going to let this go.

Unless I kill him in his sleep. 

Three minutes crawl by on an ancient-looking grandfather clock, and I'm having trouble thinking of the bad side of that particular coin.

"You're the only person I know who can think loud enough to wake a man out of a sound sleep."

"Christ!" I gasp out, and his arm quivers a little against the CCNY emblem across my…or rather, his…sweatshirt as laughter runs through him. 

"Well, apparently you were thinking about something you shouldn't have been," Toby reasons. "Then again, I can't say I'm not doing the same right about now. You look good like this, CJ."

I glance at him and he gives me a sort of sleepy, mischievous smile that I never would have imagined could come from him, and I disturb myself by thinking that maybe I can understand why my college roommate enjoyed waking up next to him for quite a few years. 

My cheeks get warm, and I get snappy. "Actually, I was just thinking of smothering you with a pillow."

"Why? Was I snoring?" he asks, comfortable waking up next to me. And I'm pissed that he is. His nerves should be as on edge as mine right about now. I'm shocked that they are not. I've been anticipating Toby's reaction for quite a few minutes here, and he's thrown me by this casual acceptance of the fact that we are laying here, entwined.

The man has the ability to throw me like this whenever he sees fit, and not many other men do and that's just annoying.

"You were snoring. Yes." I lie. 

"How's your foot?"

"It's broken, thank you."

"Not a morning person," he guesses.

"You're just now figuring this out?" 

"You'd think you weren't sleeping well at night," he says pointedly. I figured he'd give me five minutes before jumping on this.

"Toby..." I warn.

"CJ," he responds calmly enough. I shake my head but he says, "CJ, we're gonna do this now."

"You can do this now. I don't think I will," I growl, and if my foot wasn't held together by broken #2 pencils and gauze, I would stalk off in a huff worthy of a soap opera. 

"Okay, I'll do this now. You can join in when you want," Toby shrugs. I notice that he hasn't really moved. His hand is still splayed across my ribcage, just under my breast. I have a strange feeling of being held down by the whisper touch.

"This should be interesting," I say in a nasty voice.

"CJ...you can't pretend like all of this isn't happening. Whatever you were dreaming last night--whatever it was--I've never seen you like that before. I'm worried about you. I'm lying here, and I'm saying that I, Toby Ziegler, am showing concern for my fellow man. You have to give me credit for that."

"I really don't." I try to interrupt him but he charges forward as if I haven't spoken at all.

"CJ, it isn't my business. I know it isn't. But I won't let it go now. You can't ask me to. My mind has gone to the worst places, and I need to know if I'm right."

"You're not making--"

"You said you were in a prison. For three days."

"Toby, you don't--"

He's tired of my stalling. His voice becomes less patient. "CJ! Three days? In a Qumari prison?"

"Yes," I hiss. "Three days."

"I have to ask, CJ. Did they...did the guards there..." he hesitates forever on the word, then spits it out quickly as he winces, "rape you?"

"No!" I shout and am surprised by the indignant tone of my voice.

His fingers have tightened around the fabric of the sweatshirt I'm wearing, digging just slightly into the skin underneath. The fire is in death throes but it shoots out one last beam of light that glitters off Toby's wedding ring.

"CJ..." he begins and I realize he doesn't believe me.

"Toby, think about it. Those men hate their own women. Can you imagine how much they hate American women? Particularly American women who've been trying to help their women? Do you think there's a man in Qumar who would touch me in that way?"

"Yes, I do. If for no other reason than that very one," Toby says quietly. "Rape isn't about desire. You know that as well as I do."

"Well, they didn't do it."

"Do you swear it? They didn't...you know?" I don't think he can bring himself to say the word again.  


"I swear it," I say, and feel very weary. It seems highly unusual that Toby doubts me enough to ask me to give my word. 

"Okay." He sighs and his fingers loosen their hold on my shirt and he finally rolls away, onto his back.

We lay there, shoulder touching shoulder, for a few minutes, silently staring at the canopy above. 

Why the relief in his voice? Why is that the darkest place he can think of to go to? I wonder for perhaps the first time, what if rape had been the worst of it? I'm not about to minimize the horror of rape. I can't even imagine…but there are things that are worse, I'm certain, because I've watched the women who live with them every day.

"They beat you, then." His words are raw and troubled and laced with certainty. 

In my peripheral vision, I see him look at me, and I close my eyes and turn my head away. It shouldn't be so hard to tell him. Maybe it is right that I do. But I have no idea how to tell him what I know now, what I have known all along in these years since.

I know what fear smells like. It's a dark, musty hole with rotting straw and unclean bodies. Sweat, bile, excrement. Blood. Urine. And something else that isn't so easily defined. Something sickly sweet and desperate. 

I know what fear sounds like. It's the sound of blows upon flesh. Solid, surprisingly deafening blows that never, never stop. It comes closer and closer, louder and louder. And then the sound of fear is the heavy latch on the outside of my door, clanking. Followed by creaking hinges. It's a foreign language, rough and unfamiliar, but threatening, and growing more agitated when I can't answer back. It's low moans down black corridors, through dirt walls, from my own mouth when they are gone. It's my own soft, soft sobbing joining the others after the thin strip of sunlight falls off the far wall.

I know what fear tastes like. It's metallic blood and bitter adrenaline and hot, sour bile that scorches up as dirty knuckles or booted feet drive into my jaw, my stomach, my legs. It's the taste of the gritty dirt that flies in my mouth as my lip rips away from the teeth I've clenched across it to keep from giving them the satisfaction of a cry.

And I know what fear looks like. It's what lives in the eyes of those women I tried to help. It's what was in my own eyes when I turned my back on all of them to come back to safety. 

"Yes, they beat me. They hit me; they hit all the women there. They raped some of the others, and I listened to it and I wondered if I was next. And I was, with the beatings, but not the other. And I was so glad. But yes, they beat me. Until I wondered if they would stop until I was dead." I say, ragged and bitter. Exhausted as when a Qumari guard, one that had broken ribs the night before, came and dragged me from the cell. 

I'd been confused and frightened, and despite the hell that was my prison, I'd panicked at being taken from its familiarity. Delicately boned hands had reached through tiny slats in the dark walls as I passed and I learned where the other voices had been coming from. 

My captor had been cruel, even on the walk upwards, out of the bowels of the Earth. He'd cursed me and taunted me, and knocked me to my knees twice. Prodded me into blazing, disorienting sunlight with the barrel of his machine gun. I stopped dead, trying to open my eyes and meet my fate, but the light was just too painful following the darkness. 

I remember thinking I was being pushed to my execution. Wondered if it would be a firing squad, stones, or beheading. Recalled not caring as long as the endless hours of waiting for monsters to walk into my hole would stop. 

Instead, an American soldier had dropped a blanket about my shoulders, because I'd been shivering violently from shock and fear despite the desert heat, and he had mostly carried me to a waiting helicopter. There I'd been reunited with my group. Some sporting bruises and cuts. I could tell by the way they'd looked at me that my own injuries were much more severe. I could also tell by the side-long glances they'd given one another that they thought I deserved whatever treatment I got. It had been my video footage that had gotten us into the prison.

Toby's hand comes to my shoulder again, and I don't think he's going to let go. He moves closer to me, until he's nearly flush against my side, but I still won't look at him.

"We had to leave the country," I say.

"I'm sure you did."

"I was so glad to go. So glad," I say, and my nose starts stinging as tears scald my eyes, and I'm glad that Toby's at my back, that he can't see this—this shame I feel and have always felt at the mention of Qumar.

"Were you hurt badly? Physically?"

"I lost a few back teeth. Some broken ribs. Dehydration. A few cuts that needed stitches. Nothing too serious. Nothing like they've done to other women there. Mutilation. Torture. I heard them doing it. I'm sure they were a little scared to do much worse to me with the government already demanding we be returned unharmed. It was kept quiet, you know. The U.S. was forging a diplomatic relationship with the country. Needed to get to the oil and the base. It would have been bad press. I'm not entirely unsure I wasn't traded for some promise of hastened negotiations."

He sucks in air, and his fingers tighten about me. "CJ, I didn't—I didn't know any of that."

"Of course you didn't," I say. "How would you?"

"By the look on your face when I told you about the arms sale to Qumar. It was written all over it."

"Toby, I'm telling you this so you know…I really don't blame you for Qumar. But maybe now you can understand why I acted like I did. I'm not sorry for it."

"I blame myself for Qumar. For asking you to do it."

"God Toby!" I say sharply. "It was my job to announce it. You didn't make the deal. And you didn't hold a gun to my head—" I wince at my choice of words there, but continue, "and make me get up there. It was mandate from the Oval Office."

Toby then reveals something that floors me in a thousand ways. "I knew it was going to cost you something. CJ, I knew that you'd hate it. And I have to tell you this…The President offered to pass it down, to bury it in another department's briefings. He was worried about asking you to make the announcement, but I told him that it wouldn't be a problem."

"Why would you do that? I had an out?" This is news to me, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but if he doesn't explain himself quickly, he's going to need to remove his hand from my shoulder or suffer much the same treatment Lumberjack did. 

His fingers tighten against my arm. "I…honestly? I wanted to pull rank on you."

"Pull rank on me? Then? With that! Why?"

"I don't know, CJ. I didn't really know before and I know less now."

"Yeah, well, I know and I'll tell you why. It's because you think I try to walk all over you. It's because you think I take advantage of our friendship. It's because you don't think I know where the line is. It's because lately we've had a few very public disagreements in the West Wing and because you thought I needed to be put in my place."

"Is that it?" 

"You tell me," I growl, daring him to deny it.

"You're right," he all but whispers. "I was picking a fight I thought I could win."

"And so you interrupted my meeting and you stood in the doorway of my office and you dropped Qumar on me. Toby…" I break off because I don't know what to say to him right now. I'm too stunned to be furious yet. But I'm getting there, so I add, "fuck you, Toby."

"CJ, I'd honestly forgotten you were ever in the Middle East. I really…I had no idea about what happened in Qumar. I wish you'd have told me. I would have made the recommendation to pass it off. Gladly."

"And what difference does it make that I was ever in Qumar? Why is it suddenly more acceptable that I was outraged by the treatment of the women there? Why does it become worse when you find out that I was treated like those women are treated every day? I was there three days. Some of those women have been in that prison for years, Toby! And the ones outside of it don't live much better!"

"Because I care about you. Because the thought of anyone laying a hand on you like that makes me crazy, CJ. I can't…before, when I was thinking it was, you know…it was rape, I was---. Now, the idea of them beating the hell out of you…CJ…of them knocking teeth out of your head—" his voice breaks, and he pauses, then growls, "it makes me burn."

"Yeah, well, I care about those women, Toby. And when the men there told me never to come back to Qumar, you know what I should have done? I should have chained myself to the wall. But I didn't have the guts to do it, and I got the first plane out."

"And you think that if they'd stoned you to death, things would be better for the women there? You think that would make you somehow a better person? You were twenty-one years old!"

"Those women don't get a plane ride out."

"You aren't those women, CJ." 

"No, I'm not, thank God. But I owe them something. And I failed them before, and I failed them now."

"How did you fail them?" 

My voice starts to climb in a steady crescendo. "Because, Toby, I stood up and, on behalf of the United States Government, screwed them! I just said to them, 'oil is more important that the unimaginable abuse you suffer every day, and we're not going to help you at all, because we want the air space!' I said to them, 'there's not the slightest hope that we're going to come and help you in the next 10 years because it's more convenient to deal with your men than not! So, instead, we're going to give the men who torture you more methods of doing just that. Sound good? Well, we don't care because you have no voice at all! And you certainly don't have a vote!'" 

My voice has now climbed to a level where it's uncomfortably echoing in my own aching head, and I stop talking abruptly.

"How would you not making the announcement have changed any of that? How would passing it off have given them any more hope?"

"Those women are so far outside of hope right now, that—never mind. It wouldn't have made any difference to anyone but maybe to me. But I was too afraid to stay in Qumar, and I was too afraid to say what I really felt about it a few weeks ago. I should have gone up to that podium and said exactly what I said to those three veterans earlier in the day. And I resent the hell out of myself for not doing it."

"Resent me for it, CJ. Don't resent yourself." 

I snort with contempt. "Oh don't you worry, Toby. I resent the hell out of you too. I don't need your permission for that."

"CJ, I am sorry. If you would have just told me this…it would have been different." 

"Really? You think you could fix this? You want to know what I dream about? I have a nightmare about those bastard guards who beat me walking the halls of that prison with American-made weapons. And I have a nightmare about them watching CNN and remembering when they made me kneel before them and held a gun to my head and laughed while I waited for them to pull the trigger and begged for my life. And I did Toby. I begged, and I never would have thought I'd do that. But that isn't even the worst of it. Mostly, I have a nightmare of about a hundred women's hands reaching out through their cells as I was given my freedom back. I dream of answering to them."

My throat is getting tight now, closing off around anything else I want to say…and I have plenty to say. I turn onto my side, clinging to the edge of the bed and not even really noticing the protest my toes issue at the movement. Toby's hand leaves my shoulder only so he can roll closer, pressing himself along my length and putting his arms around me.

I shake my head violently but don't pull away. I'm torn; wanting him there, wanting him to go away, wanting him to go to Hell. 

"We can't…we can't stop Qumari men from beating their women," Toby murmurs, some time later. "There's nothing you could have done. Then or now."

"Maybe we can't. But when did we stop trying, Toby? Someday we're all going to have to answer for it."

"Okay. But in the mean time, you're going to have to do something about this sleeping problem you're having."

There's a quick knock at the door and Toby and I both spring apart, but while we're doing so, Sam and Josh barge into the room, and catch us in the process of looking surprised and, I'm certain, very, very guilty.

Josh stops so abruptly that Sam plunges into his back, and they both stumble around for a second, fighting for balance. When they find it, they both freeze, eyes on the bed. I'd be hard put to say who looks more horrified to be here. Josh or Toby. I imagine I might be in the running too. 

Josh is holding his phone to his ear, and after a moment of staring, he starts and seems to remember it's there. "What did you say, Leo? Yeah. Toby's up…er, awake. Okay, yeah, look, I'm gonna have to call you back." He ends the call immediately and his hand falls lifeless to his side. He purses his lips, averting his gaze from me and blushing bright, bright red. He's doing a good job of looking scandalized and disapproving. 

I pinch the bridge of my nose and say in a voice that sounds altogether unconvincing, "this is, in many ways, not what it looks like."

"Well, people owe me money," Sam says nonchalantly, staring at me and Toby and making no effort to hide the fact that he's doing so.

Josh's mouth is still hanging open. It gives me some satisfaction to have rendered him speechless.

"Owe you money?" I ask Sam, by way of conversation.

"Yeah. There was a pool."

"A pool?" I follow-up politely, although I have a feeling I don't want to know what he's about to tell me.

Sam gladly explains. "About how long it would take before you two took a little roll in the hay, so to speak."

"There was no rolling…no hay," Toby snaps at Sam. "And can we expect more of these delightful cliches from you soon, I hope?"

"What the hell!" Josh's voice has leapt nearly, if not completely, an octave. In all this time, I suppose he's been conjuring an answer to my first comment, because he shrieks, "what it looks like? Do you have any idea what this looks like?"

"Josh," Toby mumbles, and I think he may actually be blushing right here. Toby Ziegler is lying in bed with me and blushing like a schoolgirl. This is so bad.

But Josh isn't done. He's just getting started. "For the…What if we had been a couple of reporters?"

I look at Josh's face and see that it's getting very red and know that right now is the worst possible moment to invoke the sarcasm…but then again, that's never really stopped me before. "Yes, Josh. I'm sure Rose and Ernie keep a couple of gossip columnists in the closets around here…just in case White House senior staffers decide to drop in one night, and you know, get in bed together. It's that kind of a swinging place."

"Do you…are you kidding me? With the closets and the swinging place thing? Are you really doing this now? **_Right now_**?" Josh screeches.

"Josh, seriously. Dogs can't even hear you anymore," I say. "You need to calm down. There's an explanation. Be more like Sam. Hmm. There's something I thought I'd never say."

Sam looks over at Josh. "Hey, want to come clean about you and Donna? That would be double the payoff."

"Donna! What?" And now Josh has reached a little thing I've come to call howler-monkey mode as he turns on Sam. "You think this is funny?"

"Josh, shut-up," Toby mutters, which actually does the trick for once.

"Okay, well then you both need to get up out of the bed before I go blind," Josh responds.

Toby obliges him; I remain where I am. They look at me, amidst the disheveled sheets, and they all cringe.

"CJ, couldn't you just, I don't know, get up so we can go out of this room forever?" Josh wonders.

"No."

"Why not?" He pushes.

"She's got broken toes, Josh," Toby says.

"I'm not wearing any pants," I say at the exact same time.

All three of them pause to stare at the blanket covering my legs. Especially Toby…who apparently had no idea I wasn't wearing any pants as he was sleeping in the bed with me. I feel blood rushing into my face and add sheepishly, "you see…Toby's explanation would have been the better choice for me just then."

"You're. Not. Wearing. Pants." Josh repeats very slowly. Trust Josh to focus on that.

"That's partly true," I say.

"Which part is true?" Josh asks.

"The part where I'm not wearing pants," I answer.

"Did you sit in paint again? Or is it the usual reason this time?" Sam puts in, and I give him a look that says he's not helping the situation at all. He gives me a look back that tells me that he has no intention of helping the situation at all.

"Do you know what needs to happen right now?" I suggest. "All of you need to get the hell out of this room. Someone should probably find my pants, and someone else should get us a car or fix a tire or something like that. We do actually have to work today."

"Not only are you not wearing pants, but you don't know where they are?" Josh groans.

"What time is check-out?" Sam asks. "I couldn't find Rose or Ernie this morning."

"'You can check out any time you like, but you can never le-eave,'" I sing softly. 

Josh looks like he's approaching a stroke, but he chooses to ignore me. "I called the rental car company pretty early this morning. They're having someone drive a car up from San Francisco. I got all charges to us waived by the way, and you're all welcome. We're about two hours north of the city. They should be here soon," Josh reports. "The President is feeling better. He'll get there about the time we do."

"So basically," Toby says, "this was the most pointless night of my life."

"Well, I seriously doubt that," I say a little sharply and see Sam and Josh's head swing toward me and realize that they have taken it, as they do everything, in a completely different context.

"Can I just point out that Toby and I did not sleep together last night?" I wonder.

"Please, stop. Really," Josh says, lifting a hand between him and what I assume is the image of Toby and I sleeping together.

"Do you know that if you'd sleep with Donna…at the same time Toby slept with CJ, that I could very nearly be a wealthy man?" Sam murmurs, partly to Josh, mostly to himself.

Josh turns to Sam and snaps, "do you know that you slept with a call girl?" 

"Get out," Toby growls. 

"Seriously, if Leo knew about this…" Josh begins.

"Get out," Toby repeats and this time they both wisely go.

He walks to the door and shuts it with finality, and I see a glimpse of Sam's surprised face when it registers that Toby is staying inside with me. 

"Well, that was bad in many ways," I offer as he leans against the back of the door. "And I'm not sure that you locking them out after I mentioned I wasn't wearing pants is really going to help."

"We weren't done, CJ."

"I think we were, Toby."

"Do you accept my apology?" 

"I'm tired of fighting with you," I say.

"That's not an answer."

"Toby…you were—I'm sorry, are—an ass, but Qumar was not your fault. All right? The pulling rank on me thing is a different story, but I'll let you make it up to me."

"How?" 

"I'll probably take it out in humiliation and such. That'll be fun for me really."

He sighs and walks over to the bed, sitting on the edge. He watches me for a second, and I blink a few times in surprise when he leans down and kisses my cheek. His beard rasps against my cheek and it's a strangely pleasant feeling. He leans back and fixes a dark look on me. "You'll talk to someone about the dreams?"

"No, I won't, Toby. Those are personal. Those are mine. I won't share them with a stranger. They'll go away. They always do. And someday, they'll come back again, and then they'll go away. I am okay with that. It's good to remember, I think…if that's all I can do for those women, then maybe it's something."

"But in the mean time…maybe you could talk to me about them?" Toby pushes.

"Maybe I could," I nod. 

"I'll go find your pants," Toby offers.

"Yes, please do." I say and he smiles and turns around and just before he gets out the door I call out to him, "you're not really as much of a bastard as you'd like to be, Toby."

"Yeah, well, I'll work on that," he assures me and closes the door behind him.

*

"What am I supposed to do with this, exactly?" I say, holding the rusty old rake Josh has just handed me at arm's length. My pants have still not been returned, so I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, the sheet wrapped around my legs, my heel resting on a red velvet ottoman.

"It's a crutch," Sam explains when he appears in my doorway.

"It's a rake," I disagree, and science is on my side here.

"Use your imagination," Josh shrugs. "It was the best we could do."

"I'm afraid it'll give me Lock Jaw."

Josh sighs, "well, then the benefits are two-fold. We have to get you to the rental car. It's here."

"Couldn't Ernie, you know, just carry me out?"

"You want to hear something strange?" Sam tempts me.

"You mean something stranger than two Ivy Leaguers who can't tell the difference between garden and medical equipment?"

"Yeah, something stranger than that," Sam nods, nonplussed.

Josh can't wait for Sam to tell me. He breaks in. "We can't find Ernie and Rose. There's no sign of either one of them."

They are looking at me expectantly, and I'm not sure what reaction they want here. I try unconcerned, which I am. "Maybe they are still asleep. Neither one is very young, you know, and we kept them up late."

"It gets weirder," Josh interrupts me. "We went out to Ernie's car this morning…Sam was going to drive up and make sure that we didn't leave anything in the rental car, and the damned thing wouldn't start."

"So?" I say, annoyed because they are both wide-eyed and impressed with this knowledge, and I'm apparently—thank God—not on the same brain wave as them.

"Don't you get it? It's creepy. It's bizarre. It's twilight zone. It's like we stepped into a time warp last night. Maybe it turns out that Ernie and Rose have been dead for years."

"You both have issues with which I cannot help you at all," I say. "Could someone please find my pants?"

"You know what Donna would call you right now, CJ?" Josh asks me.

"I am pretty sure I have no idea."

"Deputy Downer. That's you now. The torch has been passed."

"I'm not a Deputy," I point out.

"Secretary Sourpuss then."

*

"There's no way I'm going into San Francisco like this," I say firmly as Toby makes sure most of my limbs are tucked into the replacement rental…a nice mini-van that Josh is still smirking over scaring the "fascist car company" into giving him. Toby slams the door and I sit, undeterred, and wait until he climbs behind the wheel before continuing. "You're gonna have to find somewhere to stop and buy me real clothes. I mean it. And don't think that you aren't going to buy me a new pair of boots…and if you have to go to the edge of the world to find them, you will do so. I look ridiculous."

"I think you look fine," Toby says, and I see his eyes dart up to the rear view mirror and the corner of his mouth twitch as he looks at Sam and Josh. Sam snickers in the back seat, but I sit very straight and proud, defiant even. 

It's really quite obvious that I do not look fine. The search for my favorite pair of jeans, taken away by Rose—or the ghost of Rose—the night before, turned out to be as fruitless as the rest of this trip. I have to admit that the _vanishing_ of Rose and Ernie has started to creep me out a little bit. In the end, we could do nothing but leave what we thought might be a fair amount for the night's stay on the little bar in the dining room and wonder what the Hell happened to them.

Furthermore, when we went to leave out the same front door that we came in, the white cat was sitting on the stairs again, head through the railing, watching me. There had been a moment of alarm among us when Josh tried to open the front door, only to have it stick like it hadn't been opened in some time. It had taken both Josh and Sam to open the door.

Now, driving away, I can see the hotel in the side-view mirror. I would have thought daylight might have stolen some of its mystery, but sitting as it does on those black cliffs, wreathed in a fog thicker than anything else near-by, the old inn looks more haunted by day. 

I imagine I look worse by daylight too. I glance down at my ensemble. I'm wearing Toby's sweatshirt. In my bag was a pair of black nylons, which I was forced to put on because no one had a spare pair of pants. Of course, the leg of the tights had to be cut off at the ankle to allow for my splinted foot.

Sam has loaned me a pair of his boxer shorts, which are black, bedecked in little red lipstick prints. I don't even want to know where he got them, and I can only hope to God someone bought them for him as opposed to him choosing them for himself. 

As for shoes…well, apparently in some closet somewhere in the hotel, Toby found a pair of monstrously big sandals. They are brown and dusty and hideous, and when I think of my ruined boots in comparison to them, I could sob.

"I look like a freaking clown," I growl, under my breath, and Toby, Sam, and Josh all stifle little laughs of delight.

"I think you look sexy," Josh pipes in from the backseat, and I hear him unclick his seatbelt the moment before his head appears between me and Toby. "So let me ask you something, Claudia Jean. On this trip, you've kissed Sam in Waffle House, slept with Toby…so I'm wondering what do I get? Isn't it my turn?"

I look at Josh for a long moment. Quietly, I tell him, "Josh, I swear to God, if you don't get away from me right now, I'm going to have to pull your eyes out of your face."

He sits back, considers it, and says, "oh," and then a beat later, "kinky."

*

It isn't far to San Francisco and the miles are rolling by fast in a yellow streak under our hood. Radio stations are starting to come in clearly now, but for once I'm not singing along as I watch the Pacific surging toward the shoreline and think about the world on the other side of it. 

From time to time I feel Toby's gaze on me, and I know he's concerned. And that he's remembering last night and this morning. Remembering how bad things have been between us lately, and noticing how much better they feel after this trip. Remembering waking up in the same bed, and how okay he was with that. 

I remember it too. And more. I remember how easy it was to give to him words I haven't given to anyone else in twenty years. How easy it was to forgive him for what he'd done. How easy to see that the apology he gave me was full of the echoes of my own pain. 

This man is very dear to me. My closest friend. And so much more that isn't even definable. We've been at odds for so long that I have forgotten how right it feels for us to be as we are now. At ease. Companions.

Josh and Sam are in a heated debate about the ethics of downloading music on the Internet and have been for some time. They aren't paying any attention to us, and we're not paying any attention to them.

Toby's arm is resting on the console as he drives. I reach out and lace my fingers with his, holding hard to him. He doesn't look away from the road and neither do I. We both know where we're going now. 

We don't need Sam or Frederick to tell us the way home. As it turns out, it was always written in the stars. 

THE END

Feedback is the highlight of my otherwise not fun days of studying: If you're still with me here, I'd love to know what you thought. 


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